Fight Tenatiously

I'm totally stoked. My body is making progress so rapidly right now! (knock on wood) I am loving it! Nicole and I have been totally impressed with the improvement I've made in 2 days It's an amazing feeling to watch all of your struggle, hard work, among a bunch of other things, FINALLY starting to pay off!

I know it's hard for y'all, the readers, to picture where I'm at physically right now, but please believe me when I write that I actually believe/KNOW that I will walk again...soon! It used to be that "walking again" meant that I would sinply *poof* just go from the wheelchair to running around like my 19 year old self. I couldn't grasp the idea that hard work pays off. I was just waiting for that one day when I would wake-up and be "fixed." Growing up, life certainly wasn't easy, but it never required perserverance, dedication, or tenacity. (I'm laughing at my writing because I used a form of the word tenatious. When I was a 7th grade cheerleader, we would joke around about a cheer that went, Fight tenatiously. Fight, Fight tenatiously.) Things would pretty much just work-out for me. I suppose the time came for me to learn a number a different things, but in this case, that I can't just sit around feeling sorry for myself. I've gotta fight to make my dreams a reality. Fight tenatiously. Fight, fight tenatiously.

Although I may hate the feeling of doing it, I am incredibly grateful that I met Nicole and she has me do torturous arm exercises! Today was bad...I started the session with my arms out, doing baby circles. I did a gazillion lil circles, and then straight from there I did arm raises. Holy crap. Those hurt! At one point, I tried to quit and just do more lil circles, but Nicole caught me and said through laughter, "HEY! You think you can just tell me what you're gonna do?"   And with that, she made me return to a few more arm raises.

And just to show me that she was listening to my needs, Nicole had me straighten out my arms to the sides, and do more arm circles!

Then, Nicole had me do repetative legs lifts with my wheelchair sitting straight up. I focused on raising both legs simultaneously, I did these leg lifts for 5 minutes.

After that, I leaned my chair partially back, and I worked on my leg muscles with more gravity. I did leg raises, lifted my right knee up over and over, lifted my left knee and straightened my leg out, and worked on lifting both knees up simultaneously. I was finally able to successfully raise up my bent left knee, and kick-out my leg straight, without having my thigh touch the seat of the wheelchair! Very cool! Nicole and I were stoked!

Next, Nicole and I worked on my inner and outter thigh muscles. We discovered that on my left leg, the outter thigh muscle needs to be woken up, and on the right leg, the inner thigh muscle needs the same. We ended up strengthening the outter muscles on the right leg by having me try and repeatedly push my right knee out. Nicole put her hand on my knee to provide resistance.

On my left knee, we strengthened my inner thigh muscle since that was the only muscle engaging in my left thigh. Nicole put a foam brick between my knees, and I tried to squeeze the crap out of it!

She didn't know any exercises off hand that would make my various thigh muscles engage, but I'm sure Nicole will have something for me to strengthen those muscles next week!

Finally, Nicole got out her vibrating masager. She massaged my ankles, calves, inner and outter thigh muscles, my hip flexors (which also need work!), my abs, my shoulders, arms, and neck. No complaints here!