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A week and a half ago we spent four days in Seattle. It was supposed to be five, but our flight got canceled due to bad weather in Denver, so we left/arrived a day late. We had a lovely time visiting friends and eating lots of good food. I never used to understand the fascination of many people with going out to eat on vacations, but apparently that is because (at least partly) I never used to live in a place that didn't have good restaurants. I would really like to send out a memo to restaurants in Regina that Pad Thai is not the same thing as rice noodles fried in Sriracha rooster sauce. Besides the conference that Jeff was attending, all of our plans centered around having some of our favorite food with good friends. We packed in as much as we could, and had a lovely time. I will post some pictures when I have a little more time.
Tomorrow we move into our new house. We (really Jeff) have been packing since we got back from Seattle, and I think we are well-prepared for our move. We have unfortunately not yet found someone to take over our lease, but that means we have no rush to get everything moved tomorrow since we will still have the house that we are living in until someone else moves in. However, aside from possibly forgetting something, I think we will be able to move everything tomorrow and get it over with. As much as I am very excited to be moving into our new home, I do hate the process of moving.
In addition to moving, I have a lot coming up in the next month. On Friday I have to take the oral exam for licensure as a psychologist in Saskatchewan, so I need to make sure that I am familiar with all of the provincial and Canadian laws and codes of ethics, and I have been studying this past week as Jeff has been packing. I am also teaching a condensed course in the month of May, where I have to try to cram a whole semester's worth of material into 3 1/2 weeks. It will be an intense teaching schedule, and I have one more week to prepare before the course begins. And, Jeff and I signed up to do another 5K walk on May 11, and although I was able to complete a 5K in December with my walker, I am going to try to do it with my crutches this time which will be much more challenging.
That whole thing about slowing down and not overdoing it? It turns out I'm not very good at that. Maybe I should work at practicing acceptance that this is just who I am, and that is not likely to change!
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Go Slow, Relax, and Don't Overdo It
When I was doing my internship at San Diego VA, I led several groups related to coping with chronic pain, and since then I have done a fair bit of work related to helping clients manage medical conditions. One of the key concepts that is always a core part of this type of work is pacing – balancing activity and rest. Often, when I see a client coping with chronic pain or some other chronic medical condition, the problem is about too much rest and not enough activity, becoming deconditioned, and then finding that activity exacerbates the condition leading to more rest and further deconditioning. It is a very frustrating and demoralizing loop to be caught in, and one I have been very careful to avoid. However, because of this I sometimes find myself at the other extreme – too much activity and not enough rest, leading to exhaustion and setbacks.
In my last post I talked about how I was walking around the house most of the time without any walking aids. Well, it turns out that I might have been overdoing it a bit. When my PT said to try this out apparently she didn't mean to start doing it all the time. Apparently it tired me out so much that I ended up totally crashing last Monday and Tuesday. Not quite as badly as I crashed a few weeks ago, also from overdoing it, by taking a trip out shoe shopping by myself. It was pretty horrible – I had multiple incidents of making mistakes at the entrance and exit to the parking garage with the little pushbutton ticket-spitter-outers, dealing with an overcrowded parking garage and no disabled parking spots, ending up having to go to two different malls because the store in the first mall didn't have my size and they assured me that the store in the other mall did have my size but they didn't so I had to get different shoes. I came home in tears thinking that I hated my new shoes (but I actually like them just fine). Jeff assures me that this isn't so different from my experience of shopping in my previous able-bodied state. But the difference is that now, after that incident, I was physically exhausted for about a week, and felt like I was moving backwards in terms of my rehab progress.
Pacing is extremely difficult during recovery, because it is important to push your limits in rehab in order to make progress, and if all is going well those limits keep changing, so it's hard to know exactly where the limit is. In my eagerness to continue making progress, I have recently apparently been pushing my limits a bit too far, and everyone involved in my rehab is suggesting that this strategy may not be in my best interest. We have been working a lot recently on trying to get my brain and my body to run some of those automatic programs for things like walking that I never used to have to think about. For the last 10 months this type of movement has been effortful, requiring me to think about every part of every step I take – shift weight left right foot forward, shift weight right left foot forward, and a million other little things that are involved in walking just two steps. Shifting from thinking about every aspect of a movement to trying to allow the movement to unfold automatically requires a completely different approach. The goal now is to make room for the automatic process, and this means letting go of some of the effort. The feedback I hear over and over again during my PT sessions is to relax and go slow. It sounds like a good plan, but I'm finding it very difficult!
In my last post I talked about how I was walking around the house most of the time without any walking aids. Well, it turns out that I might have been overdoing it a bit. When my PT said to try this out apparently she didn't mean to start doing it all the time. Apparently it tired me out so much that I ended up totally crashing last Monday and Tuesday. Not quite as badly as I crashed a few weeks ago, also from overdoing it, by taking a trip out shoe shopping by myself. It was pretty horrible – I had multiple incidents of making mistakes at the entrance and exit to the parking garage with the little pushbutton ticket-spitter-outers, dealing with an overcrowded parking garage and no disabled parking spots, ending up having to go to two different malls because the store in the first mall didn't have my size and they assured me that the store in the other mall did have my size but they didn't so I had to get different shoes. I came home in tears thinking that I hated my new shoes (but I actually like them just fine). Jeff assures me that this isn't so different from my experience of shopping in my previous able-bodied state. But the difference is that now, after that incident, I was physically exhausted for about a week, and felt like I was moving backwards in terms of my rehab progress.
Pacing is extremely difficult during recovery, because it is important to push your limits in rehab in order to make progress, and if all is going well those limits keep changing, so it's hard to know exactly where the limit is. In my eagerness to continue making progress, I have recently apparently been pushing my limits a bit too far, and everyone involved in my rehab is suggesting that this strategy may not be in my best interest. We have been working a lot recently on trying to get my brain and my body to run some of those automatic programs for things like walking that I never used to have to think about. For the last 10 months this type of movement has been effortful, requiring me to think about every part of every step I take – shift weight left right foot forward, shift weight right left foot forward, and a million other little things that are involved in walking just two steps. Shifting from thinking about every aspect of a movement to trying to allow the movement to unfold automatically requires a completely different approach. The goal now is to make room for the automatic process, and this means letting go of some of the effort. The feedback I hear over and over again during my PT sessions is to relax and go slow. It sounds like a good plan, but I'm finding it very difficult!
Sunday, April 07, 2013
Five Unrelated Things
1. It snowed again today. Several inches of snow. I would like for winter to end please.
2. Jeff has a conference to go to in Seattle in mid April, and I am tagging along. I am extremely excited to visit with friends, eat at good restaurants, and experience weather other than snow, even if it happens to be very gray and rainy.
3. This is what my cat looks like when she's getting her nails trimmed:
4. For several weeks, we have been telling everyone – including the movers – that our move date is April 26. However, our actual possession date for our house as it is written in our legal documents is April 29. I'm so glad we figured this out before showing up with all of our stuff on April 26 and finding out the house was not yet ours. Fortunately it was no problem to change the date with the movers.
5. My very exciting news this week is that for the past three days I have been primarily walking around the house with no aids – no walker, no crutches, no cane. I hesitate to call it walking – it is sort of more like the robotic waddling that a windup toy does – but quite exciting nonetheless. I can only go a short distance, only without much distraction, and only if I am within about one or two steps of something to grab onto in case I falter, but with practice I am sure it will get easier soon. At my physical therapy session last Thursday, my PT said she thought that for short distances at slow speeds my walking aids were probably helping me out more psychologically than physically, so we tried some walking unassisted and I passed the test. My fear of falling is adaptive and self protective (despite severe problems with balance and coordination I have not fallen once) but I am having to challenge that fear a bit because it seems that my physical abilities have surpassed my evaluation of them. This is a very good problem for me to have right now :-)
2. Jeff has a conference to go to in Seattle in mid April, and I am tagging along. I am extremely excited to visit with friends, eat at good restaurants, and experience weather other than snow, even if it happens to be very gray and rainy.
3. This is what my cat looks like when she's getting her nails trimmed:
4. For several weeks, we have been telling everyone – including the movers – that our move date is April 26. However, our actual possession date for our house as it is written in our legal documents is April 29. I'm so glad we figured this out before showing up with all of our stuff on April 26 and finding out the house was not yet ours. Fortunately it was no problem to change the date with the movers.
5. My very exciting news this week is that for the past three days I have been primarily walking around the house with no aids – no walker, no crutches, no cane. I hesitate to call it walking – it is sort of more like the robotic waddling that a windup toy does – but quite exciting nonetheless. I can only go a short distance, only without much distraction, and only if I am within about one or two steps of something to grab onto in case I falter, but with practice I am sure it will get easier soon. At my physical therapy session last Thursday, my PT said she thought that for short distances at slow speeds my walking aids were probably helping me out more psychologically than physically, so we tried some walking unassisted and I passed the test. My fear of falling is adaptive and self protective (despite severe problems with balance and coordination I have not fallen once) but I am having to challenge that fear a bit because it seems that my physical abilities have surpassed my evaluation of them. This is a very good problem for me to have right now :-)
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Spring
Ever since my surgery, I have needed a bit more sleep, so in general Jeff gets up before me. This morning I woke up to find that the Easter Bunny had come and left copious amounts of chocolate and candy. Apparently I just missed seeing him, as he stopped by sometime after Jeff got up but before I did :-)
We also made our traditional Easter dinner of homemade pierogies, accompanied by sweet and sour red cabbage, roasted asparagus, and homemade French rolls. Other than cooking dinner (most of which was prepared ahead of time yesterday), the whole day was spent relaxing and eating chocolate, and talking to family on the phone. It was nice to have a holiday.
It is actually starting to feel a little bit like spring here. Even though the temperatures are only getting above freezing for an hour or two every couple of days, there has been quite a bit of snow melt. The snow in our backyard has gone from being about 4 feet high to being about 3 feet high in just a few days. If you look around, it still looks like winter, except for the giant puddles of water everywhere – a sign of spring. Fortunately, the snow is melting fairly slowly, so there hasn't been flooding so far, and I'm hoping that it will work out perfectly so that the snow melts as fast as it can without causing trouble.
Exactly one year ago, Jeff flew to Regina for the first time for his job interview. That set in motion a whole lot of changes that have led us to where we are now. There have been a lot of struggles and challenges in this past year, but it has also been a year of new beginnings. Spring is all about new growth, and I expect this season to bring smaller but nicer opportunities to grow!
P.S. I decided to give the blog a quick spring makeover :-)
We also made our traditional Easter dinner of homemade pierogies, accompanied by sweet and sour red cabbage, roasted asparagus, and homemade French rolls. Other than cooking dinner (most of which was prepared ahead of time yesterday), the whole day was spent relaxing and eating chocolate, and talking to family on the phone. It was nice to have a holiday.
 |
| Easter dinner |
It is actually starting to feel a little bit like spring here. Even though the temperatures are only getting above freezing for an hour or two every couple of days, there has been quite a bit of snow melt. The snow in our backyard has gone from being about 4 feet high to being about 3 feet high in just a few days. If you look around, it still looks like winter, except for the giant puddles of water everywhere – a sign of spring. Fortunately, the snow is melting fairly slowly, so there hasn't been flooding so far, and I'm hoping that it will work out perfectly so that the snow melts as fast as it can without causing trouble.
Exactly one year ago, Jeff flew to Regina for the first time for his job interview. That set in motion a whole lot of changes that have led us to where we are now. There have been a lot of struggles and challenges in this past year, but it has also been a year of new beginnings. Spring is all about new growth, and I expect this season to bring smaller but nicer opportunities to grow!
P.S. I decided to give the blog a quick spring makeover :-)
Sunday, March 24, 2013
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em
It is still snowy and snowing here. But it was sunny this afternoon, and Jeff and I decided we might as well enjoy the snow while it is still here. We went out to our backyard where the snow is about four and half feet high. The plan was to climb on top of the piles of snow, play around up there, and maybe build a snowman. However, this is not the wet dense snow we are used to in the Northwest, and that Jeff is used to from growing up in Ontario. The snow was light and powdery, and you would sink almost all the way to the bottom taking one step in it. So, Jeff went in ahead of me and cleared some paths, then he helped me walk and crawl into our swimming pool of snow. I was able to tromp around a bit, and when I fell down it didn't matter because it was like falling into a pile of feathers. We had a lovely time, but couldn't stay out too long because it was still quite cold.
In other news, on Friday I received report from my neurosurgeon that a recent follow-up MRI confirms that my surgery was successful in completely removing my cavernous malformation. I was very happy to get this confirmation, and so to celebrate Jeff and I went out to dinner at a local vegetarian café, and today I baked cupcakes– chocolate with maple buttercream frosting. As soon as I finish posting this, I will be going to eat one or two of them!
In other news, on Friday I received report from my neurosurgeon that a recent follow-up MRI confirms that my surgery was successful in completely removing my cavernous malformation. I was very happy to get this confirmation, and so to celebrate Jeff and I went out to dinner at a local vegetarian café, and today I baked cupcakes– chocolate with maple buttercream frosting. As soon as I finish posting this, I will be going to eat one or two of them!
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