Torture Chamber

Friday, April 16

11:30 am

This morning started out pretty frustrating. I slept from about 11 to 2. And then I woke up. And stayed awake. For hours. With nowhere to go. Around four o’clock, my neck started hurting, so at 4:20 I called for someone to adjust my pillow. A tech showed up five minutes later, and I asked for some pain meds. It took two more rings of the call bell and 45 minutes before someone actually showed up with the meds. Just another example of how frustrating the call system is here.

I managed to sleep for about another 30 minutes before they came in to piss me off—or, more precisely, to off my piss. When it was time for the day to begin, my favorite tech Logan fixed my tea for me, as he often does. He arranged my breakfast tray before me, cut up my omelet, and put my adaptive silverware on my left hand. With that, I was able to eat my whole breakfast by myself and drink my tea (with the help of a long straw so that I don’t have to try to grasp the cup while I’ve got a fork stuck to my hand).

For PT, Brian took me downstairs to the CORE gym for “walking practice” with the gait specialist Zane. They put me on a treadmill with the overhead harness taking about 25% of my bodyweight off and made me walk on a slight incline as fast as I could. I did four five-minute increments of that, and it was one of the most intensely difficult workouts I’ve ever done. I know it’s important to do, but I’m really not looking forward to another couple weeks of this knowing that the intensity will only increase.

On the treadmill, they assign a target heart rate of 140 bpm, which they would like me to reach based on my weight, age, and resting heart rate. I didn’t hit 140 today at all, even though I felt like I was busting my butt. I hit 138, though, and Zane seemed satisfied.

After they kicked my butt on the treadmill, I sat on the edge of the big padded bench with my feet on the floor. Brian put a wedge behind me on the bench, and I had to lean back until my back touched the wedge and then sit up again. I did 20 of those crunches, and then he put a thinner wedge behind me and I did another 10 or so. I reminded Brian how much I hate doing crunches.

Then I had to stand up without the aid of the harness, turn 360 degrees to the right, turn 360 degrees back to the left, and sit back down in a controlled manner. I did five of those. Being able to do this little dance is important so that I can get cleared to get in and out of my wheelchair on my own. I’m not quite there, but I’m close. It will be a big deal to me when I’m cleared, because then I can hide from Brian and Zane whenever they try to find me and make me walk.

4:30 pm

OT was difficult and a little discouraging again today. Throughout all the exercises this afternoon, I was fitted with the electrical stimulation in my limbs or back. We started out with some exercises I’ve done before. I then went into recreational therapy and played a huge game of Jenga with Jasmine. It was more fun than any of the other therapy I had today (but admittedly that is not saying much). We ended up calling it a tie because the tower had not fallen yet when Lori came back and took me away.

Lori fitted my hands with her latest torture device: a smart glove called Rapael. Like Diego, it involves a kind of video game, but this one uses the gloves to measure certain motions of my hand, e.g., how far I can rotate my wrist or how much I can flex my fingers. Once they determined my range of movement, they gave me an exercise to work on that particular movement.

For example, it showed me a chef’s knife over a piece of fruit, and I had to grasp the knife, raise it high enough to go over the fruit, push it down to slice it, swipe right to move the piece of fruit out of the way, and repeat. This is timed, and since it’s designed to work at the edges of your capability, it is very difficult.

There was another one in which my forearm and hand were on the table, palm down, and they measured how high I could raise my wrist. The video showed a man lifting a large weight, and I had to lift my wrist up to make the man pick up the weight and hold it for 30 seconds. The man in the video was sweating, and I was cursing, because it was hard to hold it that long. Another video required me to squeeze a piece of fruit for a few seconds, open my hand enough to release the fruit and hold that for another few seconds—squeeze, hold, open, hold. At the far edge of my current range of movement, it was really hard to hold it for the required period of time.

Lori kept me 30 minutes past our scheduled time and put me on the hand bike after I worked with Rapael. Now, I have the rest of the afternoon off from therapy and tomorrow’s schedule is open. It’s nice to have a little break!