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| Barb Polan Barb’s Recovery |
Pat and I went to the Y today to see what equipment I might be able to use in addition to exercises in the pool. As a former personal trainer, Pat is interested in both herself and me getting in better physical condition. She walks miles and miles around Gloucester, while I row miles and miles on my machine, so she is not worried about our cardiovascular health, but our strength, especially my left side.
At the Y, we ventured upstairs to the fitness room, which we had not visited on our first tour, as focused as we were to see whether I could make my way to the locker room and get into the pool. Today we went up to the third floor, where there's a gymnasium on the left and fitness room to the right, women's locker room with sauna in between.
The fitness room contained a bank of cardio equipment on the left and a Nautilus circuit on the right. I eyed the leg curl machine as we entered, but we tried out a recumbent bike instead, to see how that went. Fortunately, there was a foot strap to hold my left foot in place, and I could even pedal with my right foot on the floor because Pat wanted to see if my left leg was just "going along for the ride" or whether it could actually pedal. I didn't do it long, but it was tiring. All of the Stairmasters, which Pat wanted me to try, were occupied, so that was out.
We looked around for something else I could try. She relented and said I could try the three leg machines by the door we'd entered: they were labeled leg curl, leg extension, and abductor/adductor. I think that's to strengthen hamstring (back of thigh), quad (front of thigh), abductors(outside of thigh) and adductors (inside of thigh), respectively, although I might have the abductor/adductor locations reversed. I'll have to check.
Fundamentally, I could do all of the exercise using my left leg for more than half the work; in fact, Pat increased the weights in the leg extension and curl machines. I, of course, wanted to do as many as I could, but Pat wanted me to stop at 8, so I did 15 on the first one ( curl) and 8 on the others, once Pat said that we can keep a written record of how many I do and I can increase it each time we go. That made me agree to start slow. After that, we went to look at a Stairmaster, but the steps were very high and, when Pat tried it, she wasn't happy with the way her weight shifted. the woman on the machine next to us said that she has trouble with her weight pitching back so she does it leaning forward, which puts a lot of her weight on her arms instead of her legs. We nixed the Stairmaster. I'm happy, though, using just the three Nautilus machines for my thighs. My understanding is that my quad is okay, while the other three sides are weak, my adductors more so than my abductors. And as we walked around the rest of the circuit, Pat showed me the arm motion for each arm machine and told me which one I was likely to use first. Pat had a habit of always putting things in a positive light. When I say I "can't" do something, she always tacks on "yet." When she told me about the arm machines, there was never an "if" I was finally able to use my arm. It was "when" I can perform a certain motion, I will be doing this on this machine. She is the one who calls Turbo an "angel dog," so perhaps she is not right about me either, but it is nice to not be the only one who is convinced I'll recover fully.
In this way, I have known for a long time that I'm alone in that regard. As much as Tom would like me to recover completely and he does everything he can to help me get there, I know that he is weary of me being delusional about the goals on the calendar in my head, which I end up being depressed about when I miss them. Yet he doesn't want to be negative or discourage me - I think he just wants it to be OVER. So do I.
If progress is a constant, though, there will be no end point to this struggle - it will continue on to the end of my life. But if the goal is to be able to walk without a brace and cane, to wear sandals, to row a gig, to walk easily on the beach, to swim, to hike, to walk my dog, to scramble over the rocks on our yard, to garden, to carry something down the stairs, then I will know when I reach there and I can set new goals: being able to bike, to run, use a Stairmaster, cross-country ski, drive a standard. Obviously, I can have a wonderful and rewarding life without being able to do the latter group of activities; many people do. In fact, I can have a wonderful and rewarding life without being able to do the former batch - and that's where I am now: working on that first group.
Some days it's easy to believe I'll get there and that all I have to add to the current recipe is patience. Other days, it's more of a challenge.
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