Picking up the pace

I'll be leaving here as an inpatient soon, but there's a lot of therapy still to do to engage and strengthen my muscles. This morning I got myself ready for an early physio session with Alex where she taught me some stretches and balancing to practice on my own. Shortly after that I headed to the kitchen to make cookies while another patient made lunch. I find the occupational therapists are hard to impress, and today was no exception as Isabelle insisted a try to walk around the kitchen with my sticks and push a cart with the ingredients where I needed them. I think the difficulty impressing them comes from the expectation that i should be able to do everything alone. They just ask me to do everything and don't help unless I ask. I really love it because it motivates me to achieve whatever they ask me to do. When I can't, they are gracious to me and help me work to meet the new goal. I did my best to stay out of the today chair while I prepared the cookies, but eventually I needed to sit down, and I was grateful for the short break as we ate our lunch because I had a hand bike group directly afterwards. Once we washed the dishes, I returned my sticks to my room and met the rest of the patients and therapists in the hand bike group outside.

Monday I found myself dozens of meters behind the other riders as I forced my arms to keep rotating the hand pedals up the slope we were riding. By the return to rehab, my arms were shaking from the exertion. Today we took a different route with no slope and I found myself in the middle of the pack as we cycled at a leisurely pace through a nearby park. I was still exhausted after, but I still managed to have the strength and energy for most of my routine arm workout downstairs in the gym. I crashed on my bed for a two hour nap after that though. I woke up in time for dinner, and after the meal went to station two to visit a patient who had moved from my station a couple weeks ago. I befriended his wife first as she found me standing near her husbands centrally located room one day. I soon discovered they were from South Africa and spoke fluent English. We had some great conversations, and I was happy to repay a visit as they had come to see me in my station a couple times already.

I was yet again struck by how incredible my life is as Peter pointed out that were it not for my accident and his we never would have met each other. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to make friends with people like the unassuming badminton world champion who gave me advice and encouragement about traveling with bathroom and mobility difficulties to the former mayor of Cape Town, South Africa who introduced legislation to desegregate city beaches before it was legal in the rest of the country. These are wonderful people to have conversations with, and I'll be forever thankful to have met them and plan to keep in touch with them.

The next few weeks will continue to be a whirlwind, but as the pace of life speeds up, I hope I'll still find time for an ice cream with another expat who's excited about what the world can offer or a short chat in my broken German with a Swiss woman who despite our language barrier still builds a friendship with me. I'm grateful for the people who are helping me along in this journey in various different ways, and I pray that I'll stay focused on the relationships when the details of daily life overwhelm me. Please pray with me that I will stay on top of the details though - organizing prescriptions, arranging transportation, filling out paperwork. There's a lot to keep track of, and I'm worried I'll lose sight of something as I settle in to life outside of a hospital. I'm still also praying for some inexplicable cuts to heal and digestion to resume a normal process. With that, I'm praising God for the increased stability while walking with sticks and the clearance to walk around the station alone.