Oct 7 to Oct 26

Sun Oct 7^th:Started reading an eBook, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, only the second book I have read in 15 years. I have Cloud Reader which allows me to read it on my laptop…very interesting book, the first of a trilogy. Can’t read books as I can’t hold it with one hand and turn the pages.

Mon Oct 8^th: The diarrhea bug was back. Had a bout in the shower in the morning, and a bout in the afternoon that required me to be on the can for about 2 hours. I had been writing the blog in the morning and again pain in back and ribs got so bad had to do the pain meds again. It had to happen on Thanksgiving Monday when I was supposed to go to my brother-in-laws for turkey dinner. Instead Darcy put on some depends and I went to bed while she went for turkey. Before she left I had a pee and she emptied the urinal and put everything on the table beside the bed, a phone, Kleenex, and a bottle of water. I fell asleep until about 6:00 and woke up and had to pee. Looked for the urinal that was NOT on the table. I held it as long as I could…good thing I had the Depends on…note they do leak. Darcy came home at about 7:00 and I did get a turkey dinner.

Things to be thankful for…Darcy who has really stepped up to the plate, both of my daughters, Meghan and Kelly and all of my friends who take me places and help me work out and friends who are just there and for the donations that are helping us through this. Oh yes and thank goodness that I don’t live in the USA. 

When I was at Parkwood, I met a young man who was the son of a patient. He still keeps in touch with me and came for a visit in the afternoon…it was great to see Scott. 

TuesOct9^th: The intestinal problems have gone. It is amazing how much better the whole body feels. Good thing as I went to the pool with Yonna. Did the usual stretching of arms and legs and then some standing and squats. Rosa my new girlfriend was there and I told her I was practicing dancing and tried to shake my hips…forgetting that the float was off and Yonna was standing in front of me. I started to tip over but Y0000000onna came to the rescue. Did lots of single leg squats on the left leg. Not perfect stands, but using the left leg nonetheless. 

Did ½ hour on the bike after supper

WedOct10th:  OT, PT and a massage by Jeanie. OT worked left arm and got me moving the muscles to lift my hips. I think I can find them and start them moving. PT did the usual stretches but Laura is incorporating some drills that get my arms doing one thing and the legs doing something else. The left arm was suspended from a rope and my left leg was pushing on a big ball. That may sound simple to you but I have to think through each move and concentrate very hard when trying to do two at the same time…it is improving all the time…a little at a time.

Jeanie, the massage therapist, (Keep wanting to call her a masseusebut I think that implies something kinky!) did a bit of work on my plantar fascia on my left foot to try and break everything up…knuckles up and down the sole of my foot…yikes…felt really good when she stopped.

ThursOct11^th: In the pool with Yonna and Grandpa. Darcy needed the car so she dropped Yonna and I off at the pool at 11:15, the swim starts at 11:30. Grandpa must have just missed us as he pulled up at about 11:20 and waited. At 12:35 he decided that something must be wrong and drove over to the house to find out…saw the car was gone and came back to the pool and decided to check inside and found us. We must admit, we thought he had forgotten.

 It was a good workout, ½ hour on left hand which I call Lefty, not allowed to call it the bad arm.  Did some stretches and squats and some standing. Stood for several minutes unassisted. The left knee does not straighten out enough, really going to have to work on it.

All in all a tiring day. Before the swim went for PSA blood test at the hospital, a test I would recommend to all men over 50. The results to be sent to my urologist who I’ll see at the end of the month. Back in the car and out again to wait for Yonna to take me to the pool, into and out of the car again, then into and out of the car at home. At 4 there is a chiropractor appointment in Simcoe. Into the car and out in Simcoe, then in the car in Simcoe and out again at home. Got home at 5:30 and had supper as the plan was to go to a Karate Black Belt meeting at 9. All the ins and outs of the car takes its toll on both Darcy and I. We decided not to go to the Meeting as that would mean 2 more ins and outs of the car.

FriOct12^th: To PT in London with Yonna. Laura was there to get me in the standing table and do some stretching of my arms and legs. Again she was trying to get me to move my arm independently of my left leg. May be simple for you. Same drill as before, push with my left leg to tighten up my quads and gluts then has me straighten and bend the left arm at the same time. I must concentrate very hard on keeping the left leg tight and moving the left arm. While moving the left arm I must consciously check to make sure the leg is still tight. Gives the ol’ brain a workout.

SatOct13^th: Pretty much a rest day. Read most of the day. Went to the Forest City Velodrome in London to see the last day of the 6 day races. The riders raced last Thus, Fri and Sat and finished off this weekend. A team from Delhi finished 3^rd out 6 teams. There was a pro there who raced in Europe last year. The guys are reaching speeds of up to 60kph on a banked oval track of 140 m. There were races for 11 and 12 year olds that was neat. We went especially to see Logan McIntyre race who is a 14 year old Silver Spokes SC member. He was riding with the adults and did very well. I heard he can do a lap in 8.5 seconds at 60 kph which is flying. He will be a real contender in a couple of years. A late night out, we cancelled the PSW and Grandpa drove us up. Getting into the velodrome was interesting…up a flight of 8 steep stairs but with two guys on the handle bars and a couple on each side it was a quick trip up. The track was built in the old London Ice House so there is no heat in the place. We had the best seats in the house right at track side. They did provide me with a heater so I was nice and toasty. I was a little leery about going down the steps frontwards, it was even more funas I took the seat belt off the chair a month or so ago…but we made it.  Got home at 11 and Darcy and I did the bowel Care stuff and got to sleep a little after midnight.

Nice to know that we can stay out late. There are several parties and events to go to in the next month or so.

Sun Oct 14th:  Coffee with the guys. If there is a chance of rain we go to the mall. I can get in and out of the car in the mall parking lot. We are becoming ‘mallies’. Spent the afternoon reading.

Did sit to stand before bed, 3 sets of 10.

: PT at 11. Did the normal stretching and trying to separate the left arm from left leg. Then got into standing and had to move to my right and it was the first time I was able to stand on the right and move the left foot. Still I turn on everything when I stand up…back, neck and arms are rock hard.

TuesOct16^th: Missed the pool and went out to the Seniors Brunch at Elmhurst with Jack and his wife Beanie. Jack is a friend I met at Parkwood. A very good time…highly recommended to all the old farts out there.

WedOct17th: PT at Parkwood. Did the normal stretchy stuff and in prone position. It would be nice if I could get into prone easier at home. It really does stretch out the back and legs. Got on the treadmill for a few minutes. That was the video that Dorathea put on Facebook. Must think every step and contract the quads and stand tall on each leg on every step. Hard to get the ol’ brain working that fast. Going to be interesting when I get on it for an hour. I was pooped after only 6 minutes.

walking on the treadmill

ThursOct 18:  In the pool with Yonna and the Sarge. Did the usual stretching and standing with lots of single leg squats. Did some standing with no support for about 5 minutes. When I started to lose my balance I was able to correct and maintain a straight up posture. Came home and tried to read and kept falling asleep.

FriOct19^th: Had PT today with Emily the PTA. Instead of the normal standing table for 20 minutes, they decided to do some stretches first and then the standing table to see if the stretching would loosen up my back. I have in the past been able to stand for 30 minutes but today I could only manage 10 minutes….grrrr. Don’t know what was wrong other than I felt very ‘heavy’ and I had a lot of spasms. Strange feeling…feels like I can’t move my arms and legs but I can when I try. Darcy has had a cold and some of the PT’s as well so maybe I am fighting something.

Got a new mask for the CPAP that is a different design and we’ll see if it eats my nose. Tried it last night but only kept it on until midnight. Woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep as the noise of the air rushing thru the mask was too loud and kept me awake. Woke up tired with lots of spasms. More proof I need the CPAP.

SatOct20^th: Felt crappy,tight all over spent the whole day reading, The Girl Who Played with Fire.

SunOct21^st: Still very tight, went out to Dan and Meghan’s for a BBQ with the cycling club. It was after the Fall Finale which I organized in the past. It was always at least 160 k+. Seems they shortened it this year to about 70k. It was great seeing all the guys and gals and theBBQ was good. Got to take home some cheese cake which I like a lot…it’ll just make ‘My George’ bigger. S0hould have been writing the blog but I was reading again, finished the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and started the Girl who Played with Fire…finished the 2^nd book and started on the 3^rd.

Oct 22^nd: PT and did the same drills and then got on the treadmill. When I am ‘walking’ on the treadmill I need to stand on my leg as it is taking a step. My hip flexors are very tight so they got me in a standing position and put my right leg back and got me to push my heel into the ground. Note: this is with about 30% of my body weight on my feet. Given the stiffness in my left leg I can’t get my heel near the ground. At the end of the session I was told I wouldn’t be going into the Locomotor Training as I can’t stand on my legs and take a step….grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! More about that later.

Tues Oct 23^rd: No swimming pool today as had an appointment with the Urologist in Hamilton at 11:00.  Had another episode of diarrhea after the shower. Didn’t want to go to the urologist with any chance of another episode…we cancelled. Put on ‘Depends’ and waited to see if anything else would happen for the rest of the day. Nothing did and had a normal BM at night. Can’t figure out what’s happening.

WedOct 24: Woke up at 5:30 and I was very tight and it’s funny the more I tried to loosen up the tighter I got. After the shower there was another episode of diarrhea. Put ‘Depends’ on again, just in case. Was supposed to leave at 9:45 for Parkwood. Garry and the Rocket were coming from Port Dover to take me to London. I didn’t feel comfortable going to Parkwood knowing I could possibly have another episode…cancelled OT and PT for the first time… a big grrrrrr. Didn’t cancel Garry and the Rocket and they arrived right on time. Instead of going to Parkwood we had a good long visit.

No more episodes so I missed some therapy for nothing…..

Thur Oct 25^th:  Missed swimming again for an appointment to see the orthopaedic surgeon. I’ve been having a problem straightening out my knee when I stand. To get it straight I let gravity do it when I lay in bed. I can only tolerate it for about 45 minutes. I don’t get it; it hurts where the old cartilage used to be and is now metal parts….things that make you go hmmmmmm. The Doc said I have to keep trying to get it straight. It wasn’t straight for about 15 years before surgery but now is the chance to get it there. He said I have fairly good strength in the leg when he pushed and pulled on my shin…a good thing.

Fri Oct 26^th: PT with Emily. Did stretching first and then on the standing table. My feet were on an incline board which stretched the calves. My knees were bent and I couldn’t stand up straight, kept tipping to the left. Stayed up for 15 minutes, a little longer than last week.

How am I Feeling?

I think the intestinal difficulties have been causing my body to tighten up. It hasn’t been this tight for a long time and that is starting to get me down a bit. Then on Tuesday when I was told that I am not a good candidate for the Locomotor Training that got me down even more. I guess it is the competitor in me; it was like losing a rugby game, losing a sparring match or losing a bicycle sprint. After a few days of feeling sorry for myself I realized that it wasn’t a loss but I could improve my leg strength and my coordination and get into the program in the future. Being down was probably a combination of the intestinal disorder and losing the locomotor training program…and that is the diagnosis of Dr. Steen.

When I was feeling down I didn’t feel like writing the blog, so I read instead. It was the fastest I read a book in a long time. I think I am over it now, just got to work a little harder to get the legs stronger

Thanks for listening….

A Quick Read

Sept 23 to Oct 7 2012, a quick read…

The last couple of weeks have been interesting, as the insurance company has made some errors. Darcy being the banker looks after all the financial stuff. It seems that on one of the invoices it said I was in an acute care hospital.  According to the policy insurance pays $15 a day for an acute care room and 80% for a rehab hospital to a maximum and we pay the rest. They called at 20 after 7 on Tuesday night to tell Darcy they would be investigating my case and would be going back to Dec 16^th to look at the file and had sent Parkwood a cheque for $15 a day, $435 for the month of February. Needless to say this upset Darcy.Darcy tried to explain that I had been in a rehab hospital. They wanted to know if I was in rehab .for drug abuse. It finally got straightened out a couple of days later but Darcy didn’t need to be put through that wringer. Good thing Darcy keeps all receipts and makes notes on everything. Seems the insurance companies just keep hammering on you hoping you give up…Darcy didn’t.

OT and PT have been going about the same. OT working on my left arm and shoulder. In PT we have been working on sit to stand, prone lying and practicing on the treadmill. It was a little discouraging last Wednesday as they were moving my legs with 40% .of my body weight on my feet. I wasn’t help lift my legs or moving them forward. To walk you need to shift weight from one foot to the other and start your hip moving up and forward to get the leg to follow. Since I haven’t used the walking muscles for a year, I can’t get the hip up to move the leg forward. I haven’t found an exercise that will strengthen those hip muscles. It’s a bit of a catch 22; don’t have the muscle to lift the hip so I can’t lift the hip to build the muscle….. hmmmmm! I must think of the movement and try to get the ol’ brain to turn on the right muscle which is hard to do as the brain turns on the ones all around it, like my quads and gluts.

Yonna is still taking me to the pool most Tuesdays and Thursdays. We are doing the same stretching, standing, weight shifting as usual. The weather is cooling down and that creates some problems riding home in the power chair after the pool in a wet bathing suit. My thermostat is broken. It is one of the autonomic systems that dilate blood vessels to warm up cold parts of the body. My feet are like ice cubes most of the time, and sometimes one is hot and one is cold. Or one hand is hot, or my legs will be warm and there will be a cold spots on them. By the time I get home in the chair on a cold day it’s pretty much… buuurrrrr… all the way home. Yonna has a jeep Liberty with heated seats and I did managed to get into the front seat by standing with Yonna and Grandpa’s help and turning and sitting on the seat. Getting out was even easier. The ride was a lot warmer. Don’t know if I can stand and pivot to get into the Matrix as the seat is quite a bit lower and I’d probably collapse into it….we shall try one day.

Did some visiting on Sunday Sep 30^th. Visited my friend Jack who I met at Parkwood, and his wife, they live just outside of Wallacetown. He lives on a beautiful 26 acre parcel of land. He broke his back when a quad flipped over on him; he’d driven up the hill a thousand times same as me having ridden thousands of kilometers in the dark. He can walk with a walker or two canes but just can’t get his legs to move on their own. He drives his car and his tractor and does all sorts of stuff around the house. It just takes him a little longer to do. Jack is proof that the only limits are those that other people put on you.

Felt a little crappy for a couple of days, nothing major just a little intestinal thing, perhaps I ate some meat from XL foods...lol. More on that later.

To walk I must shift weight to my left leg but it is very weak and it won’t support my weight. Probably said this 100 times. To get it stronger I need to get some sort of leg press to strengthen the legs. Any ideas out there on a how to construct a leg press, that I could push from a wheelchair?  To try to build the leg up I put more tensionon the bike. I think the right leg is doing a lot of the work. And I don’t know how to isolate the left leg. PT continues to work on it and whenever we are in the pool we do squats on single legs as the buoyancy helps…it is just so damn slow.

Had coffee with the boys and Etienne (broke his neck on the trail about 150 yards from where I fell) who was looking very good. He is walking better and is back riding his bike. He has his road bike on a trainer and uses his narrow bike seat. Since he has no bum either, that is probably limiting his bike riding time.

Starting to use a big exercise ball to stretch my hip extensors and my back. Lie on the bed with my legs on top of the ball and roll the ball side to side. Like any stretching it feels soooo good when it is over.

I use a CPAP machine because of my sleep apnea. It helps me get a good 7 hours sleep a night. For those of you who don’t know about CPAPs, the mask can either just cover your nose or as in my case, since I can’t keep my big mouth shut, it also covers my mouth. The bridge of my nose is also a strange shape due to about 11 breaks while playing rugby and 3 from Karate…broken noses hmmm…wonder if that has to do with its size. The number of breaks is directly proportional to the length of the nose. I digress…do to the fact that there is very little bridge left on my nose and there is also a bend, the mask does not seal well at that point. A CPAP puts pressure in your nose to keep the airways open in the back of the throat and thus a tight seal is required. To get a seal we tighten the mask, which isn’t supposed to happen and every morning I wake up with a pressure sore on my nose. It is just a matter of time before it becomes an open sore. We need to find a mask that will fit a quirky nose. Note anyone out there who snores a lot should be checked out for sleep apnea, as the airways close off during snoring. You may stop breathing and you wake up, if you don’t wake up it may interrupt your sleep unbeknownst to you. It can cause all sorts of health issues…just saying… if you snore and still feel tired in the morning…you may wanna see your doc.

How do I feel?

As mentioned, had a couple of bought's of diarrhea that are very different. It seems with a spinal cord injury it affects you differently, no you still have runny poop but I get muscle tension in my trunk and in my legs. The isometric tension is so strong in my back and intercostal rib muscles,I have to take pain meds to get through it. Probably was the intestinal thing that made me feel a little down. Perhapsthe reason the legs weren’t working in PT. I didn’t last long. When I was feeling a little glum, I saw Jack and all the stuff he is doing and then saw Etienne and how well he is getting around, it gave me some incentive to get my ass in gear again.

The good news is I have reduced the sleeping meds from 15 mg/night down to 3.75 mg with no side effects and I still get to sleep. The CPAP could be helping with that. In the morning when I get on the computer, I fall asleep on and off until about noon. We thought it might be a hangover from the sleeping meds. Now that it is down to 3.75 mg and I am still falling asleep.It must be something else…go figure. I take 150 mg of Effexor in the morning plus 90 mg of Baclofin which both have drowsiness as a side effect. Effexor is an antidepressant and Baclofin is for muscle spasms. We called the psychiatrist to see if we could move the Effexor to be taken at bedtime. Perhaps that will assist me in going to sleep and I can get off all the sleeping meds altogether.

It did the ol’ heart good seeing the reports and watching the videos of the guys and gals competing at the WKC World Championships (Karate) in Quebec on the weekend. Congrats to Kelly Havorka for her 3^rd Place in continuous sparring and to the World Champion Sensei Mark Deleemans in continuous fighting. Congrats to all who competed, Mike, Dave, Andy and Greg, you did the club proud. It should be noted that all the divisions were Black Belts and under belts could compete if they qualified. Kelly is a Blue Belt and was an alternate and didn’t know until she arrived that she would be fighting. All the more amazing her 3^rd place finish is against Black Belts.…well done.

Thanks for listening….