Sylvia's Journal

We woke up late and started to talk. I had not even propped myself up to write. This was a new experience; a journal entry with two voices for a change. Axel is lying on his left side, the side of the operation, the bad arm, the one with the two deck screws inside it. This is a huge accomplishment. Last night I even maneuvered myself briefly inside the hollow of his left arm. Axel was afraid that the deck screws would stick through his arm and hurt me (the orthopede thought this was very funny, ‘no, that could never happen”). Only a day ago he did not think himself capable of lying on his left side. Once body parts are released after being either encased in plastic or some other health device, it is hard to let go of the fear that these body parts are fragile and bound to break or that they will bend the wrong way and something terrible will happen. It’s the fear holding us back, the imagined pain, not actual pain.

So with this new small victory, Axel, or rather we (we are in this together) turned another corner, a small one, but a corner that opens into a new hallway. The fact that there are a zillion corners and hallways after that is a little discouraging at times. Axel read his ‘syllabus’ to me for the next couple of weeks of physical therapy and got a little depressed. The syllabus is called Lumbar Stabilization. Chapter one is ‘lie on your back with knees bent and feet on floor.’ After that there are six more chapters. He knows when he can move into chapter 2 called ‘Bridging’ when he can do ‘dead bugs’ and ‘double dead bugs’ which are the last exercises of chapter 1. That should be a sight; I can’t wait.

I had my second acupuncture session where the focus was on the nerve-impaired sole of my foot. The feeling had been millimetering in from the back of my heel in the direction of my toes. Until I started acupuncture it had covered about half my heel, moving about one millimeter a week. Now, on waking up, I discover that most of my heel has its feeling back. The acupuncture session was less intense than the previous one except for the heel area; now I understand why; there was hard work being done there. My foot also feels more limber than even a few days ago. What causes what I will never know; I can only think that the physical therapist’s ultrasound, the massages, the multiple exercises done several times a day and the acupuncture are adding up to show these results.

A few other miracles: Axel’s vision was OK in the morning as we drove to his OT session; unfortunately it got worse again as the day lengthened. But it makes us think it is a muscle that needs strengthening rather than a nerve that is damaged. He will see the neuro-ophtalmologist in a week and hopefully we will know more by then. The other miracle is that I woke up this morning without neck pain and feeling quite limber in that region. It felt so normal that I nearly missed it.