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| Barb Polan Barb’s Recovery |
This morning, I went to the pool, without my therapist, but with Tom (as my lifeguard). It was my second time at the pool minus my PT, and this time as I walked in the shallow end (I do an exaggerated walk, lifting each knee to touch the surface and hitting my heel first, using a dumbbell in my hand –either hand or both – for balance), I counted the laps I walked– they totaled ½ mile, and it took a little over an hour. In an hour, I can walk 1 mile on the ground, so that’s twice as fast as in the pool, and I can row 4 miles on my rowing machine. In an hour I can do 3 sets of my table exercises and 4,000 reps of my hand exercise in the mirror box.
The last one is absolutely the most boring therapy of all time. WRONG: Doing mirror therapy for 2 hours, which I did daily for a couple of months, is even worse.
I haven’t brought up aqua-therapy often in my blog – mostly because I don’t want to push it on anyone. Each of us stroke survivors needs to find his/her own way through the therapy maze. There is no one-therapy-fits-all for us, and certainly no prescribed (or even researched) approach that gets all of us back to our own acceptable level. So, we each poke around, looking for likely matches to our abilities and desires.
I have found that water therapy suits me. There are things I hate: Wearing a bathing suit under my clothes in the morning is uncomfortable until I get to the pool to undress; the locker room is cold; I get cold getting out of the warm pool all wet; dressing while damp is a struggle; and walking to my car in 17-degree weather freezes my wet hair.
BUT, the showers have hot water and the people are all friendly and chatty. And I can be successful at some of the things I attempt.
After 10 months of water therapy, I could swim a modified (one-armed) elementary backstroke for ½ mile. I had set a goal of treading water for 15 minutes, but the most I ever could was 2 minutes; eventually I conceded that 2 minutes was a treading water plateau for me. At the end of two minutes, I would be panting and sucking in water; combined with my fear of water, 2 minutes of choking was enough for me, so I set the elementary backstroke goal without any flotation help instead. I accomplished that.
My PT recently asked me what I wanted to accomplish for my next stroke anniversary, even though it’s not until November. As shocking as it sounds – even to me – it will be my 5-year anniversary, so I wanted to pick something extraordinary. I picked doing the back crawl – the real backstroke. According to Wikipedia, it’s also known as the “upside-down freestyle.” Lol!
I figure that to be able to swim the backstroke, I’ll have active full range of motion of my shoulder, the ability to straighten my arm as I reach over my head and pull my arm forward underwater.
And, by rights, my wrist should be straight, and my hand open, fingers together, with my wrist twisting as my hand comes out of the water pinky first. But my PT said it’s okay if I have poor form with my left arm – success will be my right arm doing it perfectly and my left arm doing it in poor form, as long as I propel myself through the water. My left leg is not a problem – it kicks properly already.
So, my arm is what I’ve been working on. My status is that, lying on my back, with my arm newly and severely stretched, I can raise my arm up as far as a right angle to my body; every once in a while, with my arm up there, I can straighten it, but it’s usually in a C shape with my hand flopped down toward my body. And one time I was able to pull my arm up far enough that my hand touched the water above my head.
There’s still a long way to go, but I’ve got until November.
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