Bye bye bingo wings

As I like to state the obvious and say what day it is I will continue by saying that its Friday! I feel a bit more positive than I did a week ago but they maybe because it has been quite a different week.

As you may know I had my gym induction this week, on Wednesday and it was good. I felt like a kid going to a theme park that day and I felt like it was the beginning of another step in this quest. After a few forms and a quick blood pressure check I was ready for Ken (Gym instructor) to work me hard, and he did. The first machine was a hand cycle which I thought would break me in gently but it was tough! A minute in and I was out of breath and yet the person next to me was spinning away! Eventually once I got into a rhythm I manage to get both arms relatively evenly, I started feeling the benefits. So I put my head down and really pushed until I couldn't push anymore.

I then got onto the leg press which was one of the main machines I wanted to use in the first place. This machine that wasn't the easiest to get onto, for one thing the seat looked like it was meant for a raggy doll, which might be good for most people but for me it felt very unsupportive. Nevertheless I managed to use a belt to help to keep me stable and tried to use my left leg to push the weight. To my surprise as soon as my leg was straight my knee locked into position (as it does when I am standing) and I could not bend it until I straightened it even more. It reminded me of a retractable ball point pen, where you click down before you can bring it back again. Because of this, I could not really bring my leg up smoothly so I kept dropping the weight and making heavy loud bangs, which is always embarrassing. Unfortunately the angle of the backrest was creating a lot of spasms in my hips which meant that I had to get off after a few minutes, which itself wasn't easy.

The next few machines were ones that I felt I could really get into and knuckle down. With every push and pull I imagined losing my bingo wings and imagined using the walker easier. I felt motivated!

Standing Frustrations

It is Monday again and a brand new week, and what I have realised is standing is annoying me. I think I've mentioned before about my tendency to always want to move forward quicker than I am, and I think that is the case at the moment. I feel like I am standing every time but still not feeling like it is getting better in terms of standing on my two feet. As soon as my left heel touches the ground (it might not even touch the ground) my right leg is straight up. Super frustrating.

One really good think out of today is that the method of standing up has changed. Instead of having my helpers lift me up into the walker, I moved my chair forward into my walker and used my arms/underarms to push myself up whilst Cassie pulls out the chair beneath me. It sounds weird but I am happy because it is less strain on other people!

Ranty Friday!

Hello ladies and gents it's Friday, yay!

I just had a walking session and I did get a bit angry, not because of my own progress but because I feel that the lack of direction locks for the walker is a hindrance to moving forward. No pun intended! What is more irritating is the company that I ordered them from does not seem to be that bothered about it, a few false promises here and a few excuses there but no acknowledgement of apologies. It means that whenever I try and move the walker forward on my own it goes anywhere but. Eventually I will have to tackle this anyway but it is not very helpful in this initial stage! Thanks RMS!

But anyway.... That is my rant over. Instead let me leave you with a rather interesting video of me in my walker yesterday trying to stand on two feet. It is not actually that riveting (especially after the initial few seconds!) but like you I have never seen myself in my walker (obviously), so it was interesting to see it myself. I never actually get my left foot down to the point where it is taking my weight, unless I put it slightly ahead but then I cannot put any weight on it.

Still hopefully it will get better! I cannot believe how much the walker is shaking but then again it has to contend with a lot of weight.

Have a good weekend!

Joining the gym?

When I first got in my walker and used it, I realised that my legs needed some serious strengthening for them to be able to carry my heavy arse over 10km. With my disability I cannot support myself without help and cannot get up from my wheelchair unaided. Whenever I need to get out of my wheelchair and onto my bed for example I need help.

Though I can't stand up on my own I can weight bare, which means that people can help me with the initial momentum to get me on my feet (e.g. holding my shoulders or underarm and pulling me up). Whilst I am standing up I am usually spun on one leg before sitting back down, so the time that I am holding my weight on my legs is relatively short. This will not be the case during the big walk. Given this I had a thought that the ideal solution would be to do leg presses, as not only would this strengthen my legs, it would also be the same movement as I would be doing when I transfer off the floor into my chair. The floor by the way is where I chill and relax (but not chillax - terrible word!).

Sadly, as you can imagine, I cannot wonder into my local gym and get on a leg press machine as I will probably fall off of it. If not go flying across the room. So I decided to put that idea to the back of my mind, until Friday's stroll that is. I woke up Monday morning with a new sense of drive and decided to look at what was potentially available locally, as I was thinking that if I cannot use a leg press I would devise an alternative.

During my one of many times of wanting to get fit, I used to go swimming at a place called Aspire, which is a centre that helps people with spinal injuries. Aspire also offer similar characteristics as your typical leisure centre would, with the difference being they cater for people with and without disabilities, e.g. sports equipment and gym facilities, etc. Over a decade ago I went to have a look at Aspire's gym to see if I could use any of their equipment but at the time there wasn't anything suitable for me. nevertheless I decided to take a trip there again on Monday and to my surprise, it was very much the opposite this time around.

Whilst I was being shown the gym at Aspire, I met one of the staff members that works there, Kenneth, who was great. After mentioning the areas I was interested in focusing on, Kenneth showed me the various machines that I could use. Before I knew it I was testing out the different machines and pulling weights! Back in school, I used to secretly go on the weight machine with my friend. This wasn't exactly safe as my left hand use to slip off the handle bar and end up swinging everywhere. To my absolute glee, Kenneth found me a strap (almost like a mitten) which went over my hand and the bar, preventing my hand from opening up and letting go of the handle bar. I went from not thinking that I could use anything, to pulling weights on this huge machine and I cannot tell you how great it felt. Seeing how I was only testing whether I could use the machine I didn't want to take the mick otherwise I would have wanted to go crazy on it.

Secretly not wanting to leave I arranged an induction with Kenneth for next week and I am counting down the days. I cannot wait!
On a funny note I have this image in my head of me dangling from the handlebars, which reminds me of the film Men In Black. Will Smith was explaining that he didn't shoot the alien because the alien was "just" working out. Random I know.

The below clip has flashing lights!

Bouncy bouncy

Howdy folks! I am sorry it has been a while, I had a few commitments to take care of. But I'm back and I have got a lot to say (as always).

As some of you may have seen on Facebook and Twitter I got my old gaiters out last week. Gaiters are leg splints which help keep your legs straight, or at least meant to. I thought it might help me in terms of getting my standing in order by keeping both legs straight and positioned on the floor. At the moment not only do I find this difficult to do but because I mainly stand on my right leg, the burn on my right thigh is immense! This is probably because it has 75kg on it (yes I've just weighed myself at the wheelchair centre and no that is not with my chair as well sadly). Unfortunately the gaiters do not work because 1) my thighs are too big for my splints to keep straight and 2) when I stand up in theses gaiters I can't move my legs over to the right place as I can't bend them.

So I thought about what else can I use and instantly I had an image in my head of someone tied to a rock in the sea (too many films). Instead of a rock though I decided to order 2 x 2.5kg ankle weights in the hope that these will help keep my feet down (ish). Sadly as heavy as they are, when I am in the walker they have zero effect until I forget about them and start walking, in which case stubbing your toe with 2.5kg of weight can hurt a lot!

Trying to work on my standing is proving to be a difficult task, both mentally and physically, which is ironic because one might think it would be the opposite. So on Friday afternoon I decided to just go for a stroll in my bedroom and asked my helpers to let go of the walker so that I could try moving forward. Let me tell you it was literally one step forward and two steps back, once I managed to get moving that is!

Because of the walkers' wheels, it is really difficult to start moving forward as the front castors are very eager to turn backwards. So whenever I try to put some effort through my legs I instantly go backwards especially (as I previously mentioned) I find it difficult to get my feet back behind my bum. In the end I started using one of the breaks as a make shift clutch so that I can get some weight in my legs before the walker moved anywhere, which was rather interesting. The whole thing made me look like a baby in a bouncer!

This was on my mind over the weekend and it made me think about something that I have previously thought about, which will lead me onto my next blog...

Back to Basics

Today was a great day in terms of progress as my physio Anna (from the Kingsfield Centre for Physiotherapy) came over for a home visit. I see Anna every week to help with various aches and pains and she helps me keep my body from falling to pieces, so to speak. Anna came today to have a look at me in my walker and give me some tips and advice which is always good. I am not always good with advice (I blame it on my Taurean nature) but I know that Anna knows her stuff.

After chatting about the issues with my right leg going down and my left leg locking, we tried a few things to see if it helps. I have mentioned before that I am geek and often look at things with a scientific view (nerd) so it really helped when Anna started explaining why my body decides to do something opposite to what I want. One of the exercises we tried was to keep my toes up whilst I put my leg down, as it helps fight against my muscles wanting to bend up quickly. It was surreal how much of a difference it had.

We spoke about a few more exercises I could try and she mentioned that it would be worth doing some weight transfer ones whilst standing which will ultimately help with a more controlled walking. Therefore it is back to basics for me!

A difficult session...

This afternoons session was a little bit difficult to say the least but I guess that will happen occasionally. My feet felt disconnected from my brain and the whole thing felt like one big mess. As I was taking a step I noticed that my legs were so far forward compared to my bum that I would have been going backwards if I was on my own. It made me wonder if I will ever be able to propel myself forwards.

I know that tomorrow will be another day and it will probably better but it felt like big mountain this afternoon. I wanted to share this with you guys as I think it would be unfair to only write about the good moments. Hopefully it is not too depressing!

Bobbing along...

The weeks seem to be flying since I started this blog, we already have Christmas adverts! Mind you that doesn't say much because they started back in August.

After last week I was eager to get back in my walker to check out what my legs are doing (they kind of have a mind of their own). At the moment I am not using the walker at the weekends so when Monday comes around it is a case of getting right back on it. I wasn't very happy with Mondays walking as everything felt a bit tight, I couldn't get into a flow. One thing I did notice though is whenever I took a step I kept rising up in the walker and then back down again. It felt like I was on a pogo stick. This was a clear indication that the walker needed adjusting!

With my walker you have two main levels of bars that hold in place and upright . One of them is meant to be under my arms like a rubber ring, and the other above my hips. In raising the top bar my trunk has become a bit straighter which means that when I put my weight on my legs and push down I won't bob up again (like a mole waiting to be whacked). The added bonus of this is that my bum is not sticking out as much, in terms of walking anyway.

At some point this week I am going to stop being camera shy and put up some pictures but until then if you have any questions, or wanted to know anything then feel free to ask in the comments box below. I won't get offended!

The Force of November... Continued

I just did some more walking and standing, and because I like to analyse everything I was focusing on my left leg trying to figure out why I can't transfer weight to my right leg. I think what happens is when I am standing on my left leg, my leg almost feels like it's over stretching and locked into position. Therefore when I try to transfer weight to my right the effort of trying to unlock my left leg almost takes too long and so my right leg springs back up again because of the elasticity. These are all my thoughts and I could be completely wrong but I will try and get some videos of my legs next week to see what happens at the moment of weight transfer.

I am very scientific in nature so I think if I understand the problem better, I might be able to teach myself how to overcome it.

The Force of November

It has been a week of discovery and learning, which is good because it means that we are moving forward. It has been a good week in terms of training as well so I feel like I can be satisfied so to speak.

Last week I noticed whilst walking that whenever I move my right leg forward and try to put weight on it (mid stride), I do what I call a double bounce on my right foot. Instead of putting my foot down and my weight going under, for some reason my foot goes down and then bounces up again very slightly before it takes my weight. This has had a knock on effect on my ankle which is something you obviously don't want. So the time was here to invest in some ankle supports, which is probably the first of many self up grades I am going to need to have I feel.

Once the ankle supports arrived I instantly noticed an improvement , my body wasn't trying to hop, skip and jump any more. As always though whenever I introduce something new to my body, my body instantly doesn't like it and decides to increase the spasms, which made walking a little bit more difficult. It was kind of like one step forward and two steps back but I know that it is just a matter of getting use to it.

So far when I have been doing my walking in my bedroom, my helpers have been helping me around by pushing the walker forward as I take a step. This is because at the moment I cannot propel myself forward and keep myself going straight. I was meant to get direction locks with my walker but this was left off the order and is taking a while to get to me. Eventually though the aim is for me to do it all myself and not make my helpers walk the 10k with me. What I have noticed at the moment though is when I am walking my bum is sticking out behind me (more than normal) which means that my legs never go back past my bum. This kind of raised a flag in my mind because I don't think I can ever move forward if I can't get my weight bearing leg behind me to push off of, unless I wanted to do the 10k backwards in which case arse first would be perfect.

For the rest of the week I decided to go back to standing with the back bar of my walker moved forward, which makes my bum go forward and more aligned with my back. This makes things more difficult as I can be like the Hunch Back of Notre Dame. Whilst standing I have been trying to transfer my weight from one leg to another but as always the right leg just doesn't like going down when the left leg is there. Being a geek I tried to see at what point it springs back up and realised that it does not like transferring the weight from the left leg (basically it gives up at the last second). So I think I need to figure out a way to do some pushing exercises with my legs, the question is how?