Grant Writing

I am in the middle of writing a grant. Lots of exciting stuff has happened over the past couple of weeks, including a fabulous trip to California, but you will have to wait to hear about it all, because grant writing is all-consuming. That is all for now.

Little changes that mean a lot

Last Thursday my physical therapist Ruth took these videos of me walking:

Compare these to videos of me walking a little over a year ago:

The thing is, that in some ways the differences are very subtle – tiny changes in the speed with which I'm able to shift my weight, tiny changes in balance, tiny changes in how well I'm able to steady the movements in my arms, legs, and the rest of my body, and even tiny changes in how I hold my head. It is amazing how these tiny changes can add up to being able to walk or not (at least without support). I am fairly pleased with myself, and feel like my hard work is paying off – in the past week or so, for the first time since my surgery, I have a little bit of a natural arm swing with my left arm.

My physical therapist thinks that using the Segway (and thus not practicing "bad" walking so much) is allowing me to make improvements that I wasn't able to make before. I can only walk that well for a very short time, but if I can do it at all, I can practice and get better, and eventually do it for longer. At this rate it will be quite some time before I am able to comfortably go out in unfamiliar places without a cane or some other walking aid, but I have to remember that slow, steady progress is still progress, even if it feels like it is taking forever!

7 hours of paperwork

I have been dragging my feet a bit on applying for permanent residency in Canada. There hasn't been much to motivate me to do it, as I have legal status in Canada on a work permit, things that require more permanent status Jeff is able to take care of for us (like opening a bank account or getting a mortgage) with my name tacked on, and there is nothing in my day-to-day life that is different because of my residency status. However, there is a particular grant that I am expected to apply for related to my research at work, and they require that you are at least working on getting permanent residency status in order to be eligible for the grant. The grant deadline is mid-March, so to be safe I thought I should start the process now.

Jeff and I spent somewhere around 7 dedicated hours filling out forms and gathering documents, and submitting phase one of my application. It was a mountain of paperwork, and I only hope that we didn't make too many errors. Jeff said, and I agree, that this paperwork is actually worse than the paperwork Jeff had to submit for his permanent residency in the US, because the instructions are worse. That is saying a lot, as anyone who has ever tried to complete a complex US government form can attest to. It would have taken much longer if I hadn't already done a lot of preparation, in terms of figuring out what documentation to collect – I actually worked on this a bit last August, and discovered that I needed a letter that could only be requested by the HR department at work, and that had to be issued by a particular government agency. The letter was requested in August, and I got it the 1st week of January. Now, I sit back and wait for a decision about phase one to be issued, which will probably take 2 to 3 months, and then I submit phase two, which will probably take a minimum of a year and a half in processing time. So check back with me in about 2 years, and maybe I'll be a Canadian permanent resident.

Work is very busy, but it is also exciting, as it is graduate admissions time. I have a number of applicants who have applied to work with me this year who appear to be excellent. Probably next week I will set up Skype interviews with the top 2 or 3, and hopefully soon be able to extend an offer. It is also honors student application time, and the process here is a bit different from other places – there is more of a match process, where students list their preferences for faculty advisors, and then advisors say who and how many students they are willing to supervise, and then qualified students are matched to supervisors. Since I haven't had my lab up and running for long, I don't have any current research assistants who are applying to honors this year, so this is an exciting process as well, where students that I don't know well will have listed me as a potential advisor, and then I get to decide who I'm willing to take a gamble on. In many ways, it is a little bit more like graduate admissions, and since there is some risk involved it is a little bit more exciting.

And now, really for the first time all weekend, I'm going to sit and relax. I'm going to make sure that next weekend is a little less hectic, and less full of paperwork!

Walk like ein Deutch

Lately my physical therapy appointments have been a lot about trying to be creative, and come up with new avenues for aiding my recovery. I have already tried most of the "normal" physical therapy strategies, and while certainly some of them are still helpful, a big part of neurological recovery has to do with challenging oneself with variety. I am now over a year and a half into recovery, so it takes some thinking outside the box to come up with new challenges that are at the right level and promote incremental improvement. I am lucky to have (and to have had previously) excellent physical therapists.

My current physical therapist likes to search for new and unusual things in this catalog. A few weeks ago, she found something that she thought might be good for me to try – German Nordic walking poles with wheels. When you search the Internet for these, you don't get a ton of information, and most of it is in German. But they were on sale, came with a good return policy, and did look like fun.

Just look at how much fun these people are having

I went ahead and ordered them, and they arrived in about a week. They came with very few instructions, and most were in badly translated German. I brought them to my next physical therapy session, and we played around with them a bit. They definitely provide a full body workout, and although a bit awkward, also offer a bit of balance assistance. My physical therapist was impressed with how my walking seemed to be more upright, balanced, and even.

It is still quite challenging to walk with them, but challenging at the right level, so I think I'll be keeping them. See how I almost look normal walking with these, besides the fact that I am dragging curved poles with wheels behind me? You almost wouldn't know I was working on recovery, and might think I was just part of a strange German fitness fad!

Say what!? Segway.

Finally, as promised, a video of me on the Segway:

It can go faster than that, but I stay at what feels like a reasonable speed given pedestrian traffic, visibility around corners, etc. And yes, I do have to wear a helmet – it is recommended by the Segway company, and required by University health and safety as a condition of my using the Segway on campus. So far it's been great – I am much less tired at the end of each day, and have enough energy to engage in some focused exercise, like walking on the treadmill or doing balance and core strength exercises, after work. It is doing its job of allowing me to do mine in a way that is more effective and better for me personally.

I struggle a bit with the idea of having to rely on aids, and there is this back and forth between not wanting to add a new accessibility aid to my life and wanting to be able to do as much as possible. It took quite a while before we installed permanent grab bars in the shower, because I kept having this idea that eventually I wouldn't need them, and then there they would be, hard to remove. So for about 5 or 6 months after we moved into our new house, I was using these unsafe suction cups grab bars that are not very reliable, and was pretty much always worried about falling when I was in the shower. I finally gave in and had permanent bars installed, and it is much better. I am less worried about falling because I know I have something to grab onto if I need it, and being more relaxed means that I'm relying on the bars less (because being tense and rigid makes a person more likely to fall). I think in some ways it is the same way with the Segway – giving in and using the help I need frees me up to do things that will actually advance my rehabilitation. I feel like this is a lesson that I will need to learn many times over, and I imagine that I will write about learning it again sometime soon!