More Movement

it was several weeks since I discovered the ability to move my left leg toward the center. For that period it seemed that the one muscle on the left leg was the only one in which I had any movement. Suddenly I found a number is muscles had movements which started off as almost imaginary and gradually gained reality at least under the zero gravity conditions of the hot tub.
   I discovered the ability to  move my right leg both in (toward the center) and out. I discovered that the left leg had some ability to move out as well as in.  By holding my knees in a manner where the leg could swing freely, I found I could swing my feet out and, more recently I discovered the ability to swing the feet in as well. 

So far almost all of this movement is in the zero gravity environment of the hot tub or a pool. The movements have little power and, with a few exceptions such as the inward movement of the left leg, little ability to work in a full gravity environment. Still each day, all of the movements get a little stronger and more effective. It is way too early to tell where all of this will lead.

I know that I am very, very lucky. Few people with spinal cord injury have significant recovery of function. I am working hard ot see what I can do with this opportunity.

Movement

I was sitting in the hot time in February when I noticed something very interesting. I imagine that it was possible to move my left leg just a little bit to the left. The movement might have been a millimeter, certainly no more, and was only possible in the zero gravity environment provided by the hot tub. However, when you have a spinal cord injury and have had no movement in your legs since the accident any movement is a very big deal.

For some time since the accident I had been gaining feeling in my left thigh. Most of the feelings were feelings of pain but feeling is feeling and might be a sign of something going on. I have since regained some feeling in my right thigh as well, less painful than that of the last but still painful.

Movement is something else and indicates the possibility that my legs might become something more than useless appendages. Over the next several weeks the movement in my left leg grew from a millimeter or so to several inches. As the muscle became stronger I was even able to move the leg outside of the hot tub as long as there was no weight on the parts being  moved.

What would Jake Sully Drive

At one point during the discussion of my therapy my doctors raise the issue of driving a car with hand controls. I would, of course, need to use a car with hand controls because my feet are no longer functional. Their jaws dropped when that when I said that I had already driven a car with hand controls and thus knew what was involved.

The story goes back to six months before my accident when I tore my Achilles tendon playing racquetball. I felt as if somebody had hit me in the back of my leg. It would later turn out that this is the most common description of somebody who has had their Achilles tendon rupture. It took about a week including several calls to my doctor my wife and another nurse practitioner before finally my wife correctly diagnosed the problem as a torn Achilles tendon. None of the providers seem to believe that I was able to hobble around while my Achilles tendon was completely broken.

I walked into the office of the orthopedic surgeon and announced that I probably had a torn Achilles tendon. I told my story. His response was to turn to the resident and say "this is exactly what the presentation of  torn Achilles tendon is like."

After the surgery I was in a cast and on crutches for a couple months. Because the surgery was on my right foot I was unable to drive during this period. This was a large handicap but I could count on the services of my wife to get me where I needed to go. Unfortunately, several weeks after I was put in the cast Verna was offered a job in Richland on the other side of the Cascades. My initial response was "no you can't go, you're my transportation".

Then I got to thinking… "Suppose I was paraplegic. Suppose I flew into a new city. I would, of course, want to rent a car and someone would be able to rent something that I could drive. My line was "What would Jake Sully drive?

Jake Sully is the protagonist in the movie Avatar and is a paraplegic.

So I called up Enterprise Rent a Car and asked whether it was possible to rent a car with hand controls.Their response was "When you need it?". Several days later I showed up and they gave me keys to a car with and controls. I had, of course,no idea or rather very little idea of how to drive a car with an controls, I drove VERY CAREFULLY around the parking lot about four times before I felt confident enough to VERY SLOWLY get out on the street and drive home by the least used route.

So what are hand controls? Hand controls consist of a bar which is mechanically hookedto the brake and gas pedals of the car. Moving the bar down mechanically pushes the gas pedal. Moving the bar away from you, toward the front of the car causes the brake pedal to be pushed. The connection to the brake pedal is shown below.

 

So learning to drive with hand controls consists of doing with one hand no exactly what you would with 1 footIt takes a little practice, but within a day or twoYou are not even thinking about what you were doing.

Freedom at last

Of all of the adaptations that I have made over the past six months, the one that has made the greatest difference in my life was obtaining a car with hand controls that I could drive and which gave me the ability to transport myself without assistance. After looking at a large number of cars, see a previous post, we ended up settling on the Nissan Cube.

We chose the cube for several reasons,first, it was less ugly than the Toyota Scion, the other car that we seriously considered. The seats are low enough to allow transfers to be made easily and yet the doors are high enough so that the wheelchair may be passed into the car. There is enough room in the back to allow the wheelchair could be stored while at the same time carrying four passengers.

In this pictureI have just used a board to transfer from my wheelchair to drivers seat. The next staff in using the car is to disassemble the wheelchair And play the place the pieces where they can readily be used to reassemble the chair when I get where I'm going.

This shows the removal of the seat cushion.

Here I am removing a wheel

Because the frame is too heavy for me to lift off the ground I clip a strap with a ratchet to the front allowing me to hoist the frame in several steps

H

Finally placing it in the passenger seat

and driving off

A Small Friend

No one at our house was more distressed at the long time that I spent in the hospital than our cat. Normally I am the person who feeds the cat and pays the most attention to it and the animal was extremely upset that for over a month and a half I had simply vanished. When I returned he was happy to give me much of the affection that had been lacking during my absence.

With time he not only became accustomed to the wheelchair but discovered the joys of riding around in my lap. As I write this, the cat is happily sitting in my lap purring and collecting affection.

 

This picture shows the cat sitting in my pal as a cook dinner.

 

The cat now comes up and mews whenever he wants to sit in my lap and ride in the wheelchair and as long as I am not at the table eating I am usually able to oblige.

Adventures traveling

Until I went to a conference last fall I had ne real idea how travel on in a wheelchair worked. I had read that you notified the airlines that you were traveling with a wheelchair and that special arrangements would be made. We did all of that. Then there followed a lot of reading.

Wheelchair passengers need to show up early and are boarded before other passengers on the flight. You stay in the wheelchair until you reach the end of the jetway, At that point the gimp is transferred to a smaller chair narrow enough to get down the aisle of the plane. In the meantime, you advised to remove as many removable parts as possible from the chair to give the airline fewer opportunities to lose parts. Ideally, you end up in a seat near the front of the plane (less distance to travel) and next to the window (you certainly cannot move to let a passenger closer to the window get up.

At the end of the flight, the airline makes sure your wheelchair is at the end of the jetway when you leave the plane after all of the other passengers have exited. On my first flights to Cincinnati, that is exactly the way the system worked,

We next took a trip for pleasure to visit my brother in law in Florida – same idea – same drill. The first flight was from Seattle to Huston. We got to Huston and there was no wheelchair. At this point we remembered the warnings we had read about the glitches that might arise – the wheelchair might be delivered to baggage claim (so how do you get there??) or worse – one person described how the wheelchair was found out at the curb – as someone else might have gotten into a car or taxi.

Needless to say, Verna read them the riot act. After some time the airline rounded up people who had helped unload the plane. One young man remembered a woman who insisted that MY wheelchair was the one the airline had ordered for her and piut herself in the chair (minus cushion or armrests) and had him wheel her from concourse C to a flight on concourse E. He then left the chair at concourse E.

Fortunately we had a good deal of time to make the connection and even more fortunately the chair remained where he left it. After that Verna made sure to get off as early as possible and stand next to the chair to guard against a repeat incident. Does the world need a Lo-Jack system for wheelchairs.

Before we travel again I will have a sign made:

This Wheelchair is the Personal Property

of Steve Lewis

It is NOT the chair the airline ordered for you!!!

Using the Shower

The Gimp and his Gizmos – D

While able bodied folks can stand in the shower, showering when disabled is more of a challenge. First of all, moving your body through a stream of water is not a real option. It is much better to install a head on a hose and move the water over your body. Placing the hose in a holder at  body level makes accessing the stream simpler.

Equally important is the ability to put stream down in a way where it is both off of the body and not spraying into the room. This allows you to get your body wet and than free up a hand to soap up. The the water can be picked up for a rinse.

In theory, the chair can be placed close enough to the controls to allow a gimp to reach over and either turn the water on and off or raise and lower the temperature. In practice there is no way to access that end of the shower in our current bathroom. This means that the controls are several feet from where I am sitting.

This shows the seat I use for taking a shower together with the bar and the hose hung on it. The use of a toilet seat allows me to wash the my nether regions. The two handles allow me to balance well as well as to transfer to and from the chair.

After considering several options we found a tool for turning on and off lawn sprinklers with valves in the ground (see below). It solves the problem for the able bodied turned 90 degrees with the distance being vertical rather then horizontal. The detail shows one of the handles (for turning on the water) with the tool in the process of turning the other handle.

 

Sitting in my chair I reach out with the tool and hook it over one of two handles on the shower control. The outer handle controls whether the water is on or not. The inner one controls the temperature.

 

 

I put the stream where it is pointed into the shower and away from me. Then I turn on the water and wait, occasionally feeling the stream with my hand until it is warm. I then reach over and adjust the temperature. Always, the water is first used on the parts of my body which have feeling and only later on the insensitive portions.

 

 

With these tools, I am able , once I am seated in the chair, to turn on the shower, adjust it, turn it off and reach for a towel. The tool  is even long enough to reach a selector valve which diverts water from the shower head into the hose. Fortunately, that action involves pushing the valve since with that tool I lack the ability to pull.

It is amazing how much independence a few simple tools can give us.