Week 3 - Tuesday 31 Jan - Hellraiser!

Another 8am start (must have a word with the person who schedules my appointments!), another 8 hour day at PW and some more great work with David and Steve. That included lots of work on the floor ladder and hurdles (including with ankle weights) to really challenge my hamstrings, hip flexors and glutes, and single leg balances and squats on soft surfaces to address the residual weakness in my right ankle (which as Steve causes me to turn on my hip flexors and quads when they should be turned off).  More hard work - more good progress. 


Last week Jason gave a great description of the neuro issues SCI patients face. He said its like someone trying to make a phone call to a specific number in the US telephone network, with hundreds of thousands of telephone lines. Ordinarily, the call gets straight through to the right number but imagine if the network was damaged so that the call went to thousands of different numbers all at once. SCI affects the neuro system in that way. What we are working on now is to try to repair the system so that the correct signal goes to the correct nerves and muscles, and not to several wrong ones at the same time. 


Last week I began to get clear signals through to my hamstrings, glutes and soleus, and that's improved further this week. Yesterday, for the first time I started to feel the connection coming back into my lower abs, and today I managed 20 hanging knee raises, which is the first time I've done that since my accident. That felt really good.


I can't be certain where the gains are coming from, but I do think acupuncture is helping. This morning, I had needles in my scalp whilst working on standing balances and single leg squats and then some slow, controlled walking.  At the start the acupuncturist was hopeful that he might see some improvement. By the end, he was astonished at how far and how fast I progressed, so much so that he asked me to do a video! He recommended that I leave the needles in my head for the rest of the afternoon, so I spent 4 hours walking round the gym like Hellraiser! No pinhead comments, please! One of the other clients told me he's been to bed with the needles in his head. I believe in this stuff - but I'm not ready to go there just yet!!