Hey there.
It's been a crazy week. Good, but sorta crazy. It was a VERY nice break to have an extended weekend. Especially since Josh took Tuesday off too so we got to just hang another day. Including a nice lunch with his Madre.
Monday was interesting. Went in and helped out at work for a few hours. Then went to the gym at home in the afternoon and tried to do my arm exercises. Smallest weights they have are 5lb so I couldn't do my wussy chest press or my scapula exercises. I usually do those with 2.5lb weights. So I did the assisted pull up machine to try to make up for my missed exercises. WOW! Was I sore Tuesday! Felt roughly like I'd been severely beaten in the lats for a few hours. Whew!
So, in my infinite wisdom, I listened carefully to my body and got back up on the machine and did them again on Wednesday. And I'm not nearly as sore today. Oh, I'm still sore, jut not AS sore. But it was kind of nice to have severe muscle pain from working out. Haven't had that in a while. Makes me feel that much closer "back to normal".
Then today I drove myself to Harborview for PT and OT this morning. Pretty good therapy today. OT was spent gardening with my therapist. We got to inaugurate the new therapy raised beds at Harborview. I was the first patient to get my hands dirty there and I helped plant six plants. Then I got a bunch of new exercises to do in PT. One of which is standing just on my left leg and then trying to raise myself up to be standing on my left toes. Hard! And so easy on the right side! I also got assigned practicing toe taps. So if you see me around and want to get down and dirty therapy-wise with me, do some toe taps with me. Then you'll also become keenly aware of some of my limitations from my brain injury. It's scary how pronounced the effects of the brain injury are in things as small and seemingly trivial as toe taps.
After Harborview this morning I had my first neurofeedback appointment this afternoon. It was interesting. I went in and got some sensors attached to my head and then the doc set up what he wanted those areas of my brain to do and I sat in this really comfy chair and played this solar system computer game with my brain. He started it up and said that it is all subconscious. So I didn't have to TRY and do anything. The game went such that a planet appeared and then it would replicate over and over. Once there were 10 planets they would combine to make a galaxy and you'd start over. It also beeped when I was doing what the doc wanted with my brain and the planets kept moving. When the planets paused it was because my brain wasn't doing what the doc wanted. Weird. But at the end of the session, marked by me getting really sleepy, the doc showed me some graphs of what my brain had been doing. There were two lines, a green one and a blue one and the graph started with the blue one on top and the green one below. The doc explained that what we were aiming for was for those to switch - for the green one to be higher and the blue one to be lower. And that's just how they were at the end of the graph. They kind of gradually got there over the course of the graph with little blips here and there on the way. So my brain was learning and doing exactly what we wanted it to. So that's good. The whole thing was pretty surreal. And it made me really tired. I almost fell asleep sitting right there. Onward - we'll see what next week brings.
That's pretty much what I've got.
Talk at y'all later.
Ang
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Hi Angela,
ReplyDeleteNeurofeedback sounds really interesting. Give your brain a high five for me for its performance!
I passed your office the other day on my way down to C wing to bother Neha and Irene for cells and transfection protocols/reagents. Now I know where it is. You weren't in when I passed by. I'll come down sometime and see if you are around. If you aren't busy maybe we can do some toe taps.:)
Jan