November 15, 2007

Crutches and Goals

This week Lil C was walking backwards, when she tripped over my crutches and fell onto her butt. On her way down, one of the screws on my crutches scraped the back of her little thigh, leaving quite a bloody gouge. She was having a fit; I was trying to clean a cut and put a band-aid on a screaming two-year old, and it was a very bad scene.

When I went to PT a few hours later, I tried to convince him that I didn’t need the crutches anymore. "Show me how you walk," he said. So I did. He shook his head and handed them back to me. "How about just one?" I asked. "Show me," he said. So I did. He shook his head again and said, "Maybe next week, we can get you down to one. Not yet." He said he doesn’t want me walking with poor form. I understand, but I’m really sick of crutches.

He went on to say that when he was in PT school, they were required to use crutches for one day to see what it was like. He said it was awful and that he understands. Three weeks with crutches is enough. I’m just sick of them. We then moved onto more exercises so that I can ditch the crutches soon.

After a successful episode on the stationary bike earlier in the week, my PT put me back on the bike again. He doubled my time up to ten minutes and bumped my seat up a notch. It went fine. Since that went so well, he had me try the leg press. I did three sets of 10 with 30 lbs. and that went fine too. He also added weights to my leg lifts (above the knee) and gave me a new stretch where I hang out on my stomach and try to touch my left heel to my butt.

He said I’m only about two-three inches away from being able to do that. Three weeks ago, my goal was to prepare for Shodan. Now my goal is to touch my heel to my butt. How quickly things change.