Up to this point I have been using my handy dandy walker, Charlie, to get around. And when I am at PT, I have Rabbi on a leash making sure I don't fall. I've never really been afraid of falling before the stroke. I am very afraid of falling now. It's a weird mindshift that happens when you realize that you COULD fall, quite easily. The Warden has threatened me with a Life Alert attachment. Sadly, several of my physicians have agreed that it is probably a good investment since I am alone throughout the day when I work. I've already been trying to figure out how to make it look better. If one of these clunky attachments claims me as its new owner I'm gonna have to bedazzle the thing or something because for the love of Mary & Joseph I hate the thought of wearing a garage door opener around my neck straight out of the box.
Charlie and I get along just fine. Shadow has taken a liking to him and often kisses him and doesn't scamper away anymore when she sees Charlie escorting me across the floor. So, you can imagine my surprise when Mama brings out Charlie's counterpart at PT the next day. In comes Jack. Jack is a quad cane, the kind of cane that has the four feet on the bottom. Going from being encased by the circle of safety that was Charlie to relying on Jack for balance and some support was a HUGE leap. It's like trying to get Woody to put on Buzz's costume and fly to Infinity and Beyond. I will admit it was nice to finally "graduate" away from Charlie, but it was cause for some anxiety since I had not, to this point, walked without Charlie or the assistance of another person in well over a month. My grandmother had a Jack (but she called hers Charlie...follow that twisted line of naming, lol). Hers was gray. My Jack is Black. It makes me laugh when I say that or think of it. I have a BLACK JACK! Take me to a casino, I'm ready. But as we all know, canes are boring. They really are. So I really wanted to Wagsify Jack. I dressed Jack up in leopard print. A very fancy gray and black leopard print. Very slimming. Little Bit and Mama thinks it is funny. I think it is at least different than every other cane being used.
One of the nice things about Jack is that I can carry small, light items, in my left hand when I am walking from one point to another. With Charlie, I was learning to wear clothes with big pockets, or tuck things in my waist band of my shorts, or however I could manage to get around best. Jack has allowed me a bit more freedom in this sense. And most importantly, he has allowed me to get drinks on my own. I still have my 28 ounce plastic mug from McGruff that I'm dutifully visiting on a daily basis ( however, I still hear her voice in the back of my head saying, "you're not drinking enough water!") but I also have managed to drink one Dr. Pepper (with good ice) in my Epcot mug each day.
Let me explain something about Epcot. My parents took my siblings and I to Walt Disney World in 1995. It was their "vacation of a lifetime" to us. The five of us taking on Disney. I was in college and living on my own at the time but came back home for the trip. When we were there, I purchased a souvenir. A 22 ounce plastic mug with Mickey and the Epcot Flags of the World on both sides. I refer to it as Epcot when I'm rifling like a crazy woman through the dishwasher trying to find it, or in the cabinet. I drink out of it almost every day. It is comfortable. I know exactly where to fill up the ice to make it the perfect mix of ice and drink. I've even trained Tommy where to fill the ice up to. So, Epcot is my security blanket of sorts. Now back on track...Jack gives me the freedom to move around without having to totally rely on somebody else to bring everything to me, just MOST things. So now that I have Jack, I feel like I should be able to conquer the world. Did I mention that my ability to sense boundaries and limits is skewed still?
My typical day at this point in the process looks something like this. I manage to wrangle myself out of bed and to the kitchen table where I go through my morning ritual of taking blood pressure (I think our machine is possessed, by the way), recording it, downing the first batch of medication, and then making any phone calls (refill prescriptions, verify doctor's appointments, and the like) or doing any mailings that I need to do (bills, letters, cards, etc...). These usually take me a good couple hours, if not longer. Remember everything takes me so much longer. By then I need to start thinking about getting ready for therapy in the afternoon. Throw in a couple minutes to read a few pages in a book and that's my day. Its a far cry from my typical day just 2 months ago and this is what makes me anxious to get back full force. Nowadays I don't feel like I'm doing anything (in reality I'm doing a 2 hour workout every afternoon at therapy that I wasn't previously doing) and that I'm just letting time slip by that could be used on something productive....anything productive. Again, in retrospect I see the skewed sense of things as I sit here but when I'm actually in the moment, it seems like nothing.
Rehab tomorrow should be fun. We're doing higher hurdles and something called the SportKat. Not sure what it is, but it sounds interesting.
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