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Laura Hewett - Journal

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Posted 2016-03-24T15:13:15Z

The Little Mermaid

There are loads of horrible lessons to be learned from Disney princess movies, but I'm not going to touch that. I'm instead going to talk about the coordination that comes from familiarity with your appendages. When The Little Mermaid begins, Arial is adept at moving through the water by using her tail. She turns and twists with relative ease in the buoyant environment because she's used to both the water and the fish tail. When she's given the chance to walk with legs for the first time, she wobbles quite a bit. Her brain isn't used to sending signals to legs to walk one foot in front of the other; her nerves are new.[...]

Posted 2016-03-14T19:54:45Z

Spoon Debt

I'm not sure if I've referenced "spoon theory" here before, but it's a concept that aptly describes my limitations this week. You can read the whole post here, but the summary is that a woman with a chronic illness explained to her friend that those with chronic illness or disability begin each day with a limited number of spoons which represent energy to accomplish tasks whereas able bodied people have a limitless supply of spoons. I have a limited supply of spoons, and it takes a spoon to open my eyes each morning, to get out of bed, to put on my clothes, to go to the bathroom - some of these tasks take multiple spoons. Nearly none of you have to budget your energy for any of those tasks. I frequently have to make judgement calls about what I'll do each day knowing that I'll eventually run out of spoons. I can sometimes borrow spoons into the next day, but then I'm starting the following day even lower on spoons. [...]

Posted 2016-03-06T19:08:29Z

Routine

It's hard to write a post this week because nothing remotely near the excitement level of last week happened again. I've still been working hard, and that hard work paid off big time last week, but I've got to keep pushing along and waiting for more results. [...]

Posted 2016-03-01T20:16:39Z

Take a Stand

Last week there was a small adjustment to my therapy schedule as I had a special hour long session with Anja to try something we'd attempted in earlier half hour sessions with limited success. When I showed up, I sat down in a chair in the therapy room and removed my shoes. Anja and I had a great conversation while she massaged my calves and relaxed my ankles. The drop foot keeps the muscles below my knees ridiculously tight. Eventually, she got my feet to stay put flat on the floor and asked me to lift my heel while she held one hand on the top of my foot and the other on the back of my calf.[...]