Many People have asked me to describe my entire hospital stay in one word/sentence – Enlightening but not for the faint hearted. Anyway, back to the point; the new hospital.
We did start off with a bang and kept the momentum for the complete stay.
We were able to coax some movement from my then immobile left arm with the help of not so feeble electric shocks via a device called tens, as mentioned previously. Not the most exciting and fun experience folks – kind of what you would imagine inmate torture techniques feel like. My hand took quite a bit of persuasion, to my annoyance/displeasure, to get even the first flickers of movement from it. I guess my hand was just twice as stubborn as I ever was – Is it wrong to feel proud of my hand? 😊. By flickers I do mean that my hand barely moved by so much as a millimeter. Enough, however, to cause all the excitement about movement making a home-coming. After all, drops maketh the ocean!
My leg, on the other hand, was quite significantly more eager to bounce back and play its part. The footballer in me was still alive. Standing started out comparatively better as my brain, recognizing only my good right side, put my complete body weight on my right leg (and of course a walker and human support), thereby allowing me to stand crudely. This was also specifically instructed to me due to the fact that the moment I put my weight on my left leg, it would buckle down on my knees. Why? Well, my body had lost a lot of muscle due to muscle wastage arising from my prolonged immobility, which meant it did not take my body weight too well. This, coupled with the fact that my motor skills were hampered due to the brain hemorrhage, was making it difficult for me to do any normal physical movement with my left side. Fast forwarding, eventually, we mastered standing and moved on to try walking, this time with a person holding me on each side along with a walker. The buckling of my knee posed a serious problem for both my standing and walking activities, apart from the fact that it isn’t the best thing for your knees’ health. No doubt I fell a few times, but every problem has a solution. They solved this problem by making me wear a simple knee orthosis and an ankle splint to provide support for my knee and ankle joints. By the end of the first few weeks of sessions I was able to take my first step (albeit with the help of support). My first step was again a “baby’s first step” moment. Everybody was on top of the world (especially my family and my physiotherapist). Let’s not forget that all of this, again, was achieved after nearly four and a half hours of intensive, grilling, exhausting, yet very exciting physiotherapy every day for several weeks. My parents tell me that while doing physiotherapy, I was keener on observing what the other patients were doing rather than my own tiny movements. Curiosity did not kill the cat here, rather I started understanding the route to my recovery and was thankful and happy for my state. The glass is always half full!
Standing and a few steps of walking after several weeks of intensive work was another small victory for us. Over the course of the next few months we would have to face many a new challenge, grueling physiotherapy sessions and torture techniques, and of course a bit of lot of fun too. For today, that’s all folks !