Before You Can Walk

I did two things at Pushing Boundaries that I have not been able to do after my accident. The first was to get onto and more importantly to get off of the floor. The second was to crawl across the room.

The seat on a wheelchair is about 20 inches off of the floor. This distance can be very daunting when you consider trying to get out of the chair and onto the floor or, more importantly, if you were to find yourself on the floor consider how to get back into the chair. I have done this a couple of times by positioning a bar that I can use to do a pull up which raises my body to about the right height. At Pushing Boundaries my instructor had me get on the floor merely by putting my feet on the floor and then attempting to lower myself from the wheelchair. The results were not pretty and would probably consist be considered to be a fall. Once on the floor, actually on a gym mat, I crawled the length of the room but I will talk more about that in a second. After crawling I was faced with the problem of how to get back into the chair. The instructor suggested placing one hand on the chair and another on one of the metal arms and trying to push myself up onto the seat. This did not look like it was going to work very well. Looking around I found a heavy, padded bench a little bit lower than the wheelchair. I have the instructor move the bench so that the wheelchair and the bench for a 90° angle allowing me to place myself in the corner and have solid support for each and to raise my body to the height of the chair. It was actually very easy.

The next issue was crawling. It may be the only time outside of the pool that I can move with the assistance of my legs. The idea is to get up in my hands and knees and then move by unweighting one leg and moving it forward, the repositioning the arms and repeating. Sort of like what a baby does but way harder. The main issue is that the legs and hips are not terribly stable. It takes a lot of work on the part of the arms just to maintain balance. In moving the leg forward, it it important to work against the natural tendency for both legs to move toward the center. For a stable platform, the trick is to keep the knees far enough apart to form a stable platform. Every few feet it was too much work and I had to collapse to one side and rest. I fount that it was less work to lean on my elbows rather than keep my arms fully extended. It took about 30 minutes to crawl about 40 feet down the mat and get back to the chair with many rests in between.