Ups and Downs

This has been a week full of ups and downs. It turns out that driving comes back pretty easily. After last weekend's trial run at the cemetery, Jeff had enough confidence in my driving that he thought I should try taking a quick spin around the neighborhood. I did, and that went well, so now he is making me drive everywhere. I have gotten a fair bit of practice in the last week, and am now quite confident that I will pass my driving test. I scheduled the test for February 21, so I have lots of time to practice before then. I am also getting better and better at getting my walker up and down the stairs and in and out of the car. So that's one big up.

Another up is that I am now able to walk short distances with two canes. This is a step harder than walking with the forearm crutches, and is one step closer to walking on my own. I first tried this out at my physical therapy session last Tuesday. During the session it felt like it was going very well. I thought that maybe this would be my new way of getting around. The forearm crutches are being and heavy, and fall over whenever I try to lean them on something. The canes are small and light, and have a little tripod thing at the bottom, so that they stand where they are set down. However, when I tried to use them for more than a few minutes or for something like going up and down a small set of stairs without a railing, or up and down a curb, it turned out to be extremely difficult. So this was one of my downs.

The first down of the week was finding out that my physical therapist is leaving for a different job. This week will be my last week working with her. I am sad about this both because I like her, and because she's a very good therapist, and I'm not sure that another therapist will be able to help me progress as quickly. My second down of the week came when I asked my physical therapist whether she thinks I will still be using the walker four months from now. She said that unfortunately her crystal ball was broken, and she couldn't predict, but she  implied that she thought I probably would be. That same day, my occupational therapist explained that there is not much that can be done therapy-wise to help with recovery of sensation. She said that there is really no way of knowing whether I will get sensation back on my right side.

So my big down is related to wondering how much I will recover. I have been told that brain recovery mostly happens in the first year after injury or surgery. I am now a little over seven months post surgery, and it is hard to imagine that my balance, coordination, and sensation will return to normal in the next five months. I really don't know-- no one knows-- whether this is possible. Part of the issue is that it is unclear whether I am waiting for tissue that has been damaged to heal (as was the case with my double vision, which was caused by a sort of stretching of the sixth cranial nerve), or whether I am dealing with tissue damage that is beyond healing and am working at creating new pathways to compensate for this loss. If it is the former, then sudden and dramatic change is possible (as was the case with my vision). However, if it is the latter, then progress is likely to be very slow, decreasing over time, and eventually stopping. I am still making steady progress, so I know that when my recovery stops moving forward I will be further along than I am now. But it is impossible to say how much further along. For now, I keep trudging forward, one step at a time.