Sunday Stroke Survival: Exercise

Ugh! That's a dirty word, isn't it? Does anyone really like exercising? I mean besides an anorexic? Sure you enjoy the endorphins release, doesn't everyone like the high? But PT exercises are so boring after a stroke! It's the same thing over and over again.

You might have really pushed yourself just after your stroke. Maybe even for a month or two, but for five years! Honest. A show of hands. How many of you long term, living post stroke are still doing your PT exercises once or twice a day? Weren't you told to do them? I'll admit to not doing them every day. It's more like three times a week, but I also do other things to compensate for the exercises.

Exercising more ranks right up there with losing weight as a New Years resolution, but it's April. But that's besides the point. The range of motion exercises you were given right after your stroke is just as important today as it was when you first had your stroke.

Muscle memory
If you let these exercises slide your muscles will forget how to function. As I said last week, if God says I'm healed, it would be mighty sad if I have let my muscle tone decrease to the point where it didn't make a difference.

New Brain Pathways
By the same token, what if I didn't make my brain try to reroute around the damaged part to make my muscles work? It would always be a very sad day. They are still forming.

Okay, so I've told you why I continue to exercise my paralyzed side. Let me tell you some alternatives to the standard exercises.

Go outside! The same four walls close in on you. Roll or walk yourself out on the porch or driveway. Enjoy the sun and breeze hitting your face. Me, if I went out on the porch, I'd be shooing chickens away, but that's an exercise too. I move my affected arm by the shoulder and stretch my elbow as far as I can. But still this simple action exercises my elbow and shoulder.

I feed our rabbits and chicken twice a day. Their feed is kept in large outdoor trash cans. I will bend my knees, scoop the feed, and use my gluts to stand. Not quite deep knee bends, but it works my gluts and hamstrings. My right hamstring is partially paralyzed. It also works my lower back muscles. The garden is also my workout area. Not all my garden beds are elevated.

We've got me baby chicken on our homestead. I keep my balance and hold each one daily. In case you didn't know, chicks get pasty butts and have to be checked and cleaned or they could die. The brooder box, where they live, is 3x4. They are quick and don't like to be handled. Catching each one with only one hand is an effort of sheer will. They are just getting their wing feathers at a week old and trying to fly.

Speaking of gardening. There is a lot of lifting, bending, balancing, and negotiating in planting, caring, and harvesting a garden. You can get a pretty good work out doing this. I am constantly shifting my weight between legs, using both of my arms to carry flats of plants from the greenhouse to the garden. I may be lopsided when I lower the plants but they don't care. I'm tucking them into their forever home. Shoveling and raking manure is nobody's idea of a joyful task, but for an organic garden, it's essential. Every six months we are raking rabbit manure from under their outdoor hutches to put in the garden each spring. The rabbitry has a poo removal system that has us toting 5 gallon buckets of waste every month to the compost pile.

Currently, the five adult chickens are roosting on the front porch rail at night. There is a pile that has to be scrapped and moved to the compost bin every month. Then, there is the straw in the little chick brooder. They eat and poop a lot. This is swept into the wheel barrow for Mel to take to the compost heap also. This manure won't be used until the next spring. Our current wheel barrow takes two hands. This will change this month when I purchase a one handed job like pictured. I won't be left out on all the fun. It will only set me back $129.

Did I mention that I'm closing on my house on the 7th? Well, I am. My Brunswick house is sold. That's how I can afford it. Yippee! But I digress.

There is still a lot around the homestead to do. Plenty for Mel, our wwoofer and son to do. In the coming months trees will be felled, and cut into firewood. I'm not exempt from stacking it in the wood shed. I'll be gathering tinder, broken branches and sticks for next winter. The work never stops. All of it requires bending stretching and using my muscles until I'm spent with exhaustion, but that's a good thing. I'm getting a work out. I'm using my muscles.

So doing the exercises on those sheets by PT, oh so many years ago, is almost passe. Yes, I still have a folder with those exercises in it.  I'll pull it out every so often to check and see what I haven't done in another way. Why do I do it still? For the two reasons given above; muscle memory and new brain pathways.

Have you given up your exercises?

Isn't it time to start doing them again?

Nothing is impossible.

Sunday Stroke Survival: Killing Two Birds with One Stone?

How many of us sit at our desk too much? I'm raising my hand. How about you? How are you at multitasking? Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? How about walk and type?

If you have about $500 to spare then I've heard of a solution for you...

The Trek Desk. It fits over any standard treadmill. Is this cool or what?

The idea of having one of these is a great idea, but there a couple of things that hold me back from running out to purchase one with my life style.

1) The cost.
After my stroke any hope of keeping my meager nest egg flew out the window. Continuing therapy is a borrowing from Peter to pay Paul thing. Luxury items, which category this would fall in, are taboo for my budget. Yes, there is no denying the health benefits it offers, but still it doesn't produce an income so, it's not going to happen.

2) Space.
The average treadmill's dimensions are 71 x 31 x 53 inches and weighs 139 lbs. Which you have to purchase separately. (http://www.dimensionsinfo.com/treadmill-dimensions/)
The Trek Desk is 34x 72 inches.

It could almost be a DYI project, hmmmm

It takes up space and dedicated space too. It's not like you can slide the whole contraption under you bed or stick in in the closet when not in use.  I could see a narrower version to go across my cross trainer working better. I still have yet had the time to workout for thirty minutes on my NordicTrack. I'm also looking to downsizing my life rather than fill it up with things.

3) Dedicated time.
Now I could see use in this if all I did was sit at my desk all day, but that is not the case in my lifestyle. I'm up and down, and all around during my computer time. I may check my emails (deleting junk), read a couple and then have to go pee, empty urinals, change a diaper, cook, shop, play with the dogs, or talk to the hubby before I go back to my desk. I think the longest uninterrupted time at a stretch on my computer is 1/2 an hour. Although I will occasionally I might stream a movie or TV show, that only happens on rare occasions, but I'm still getting interruptions.

I'm out in the garden, at my spinning wheel, knitting, caring for animals or my hubby to spend too much dedicated time anywhere. I did purchase a sitting stepper off Amazon. It does help strengthen my calf muscles while I do sit. I can start and stop doing that in an instant. Every little bit helps.

I definitely have a coordination problem since my strokes. I can't talk and walk at the same time. If two things involves focus, I have difficulty. My concentration is not as bad now as when I had my strokes, but I still have difficulties accomplishing two tasks at the same time. This is what males who can't multitask must feel like. Boy, this totally sucks. Before all my male readers get up in arms about what I just said, it is a proven fact that females are better at multitasking than their male counterparts. Guys don't take it so hard. There are tons of stuff that you are better at than females. I can't think of anything right now, but don't mind me. I'm brain damaged.

Well, this is another item that goes in the folder as "It would be nice but..." for future reference. Maybe if I win the lottery...have an unknown relative pass leaving me $$millions$$... or maybe when we populate Mars. This is just my two cents on this product. If you have the space for it, the time for it, and a few hundred to spare...go for it. It sure beats sitting on your duff all day. Kill two birds with one stone. Get your exercise while surfing. Great idea, but it just isn't practical for me.

Nothing is impossible with determination.

Sunday Stroke Survival ~ Fitness Bit

Confession time again. I've never been physically fit. I've never been able to pass the President's physical fitness test even as a child. I've always had genetic discrepancies work against me.

I was genetically predisposed to things like asthma, arthritis, cardiac problems, and assorted other things that were not conducive for physical fitness. When it came to the roll of the dice for bad genetic combinations, I always came out on the losing end starting from birth being several months premature.

That never stopped me from trying. Does anything stop me from trying? Nope.

Over the years, I've been a weight lifter. Imagine being five feet squat in height with a partner who is 6'2" tall, lifting a patient who is twice your body weight, including the weight of the stretcher, cardiac monitor, oxygen tank, etc making it four to six times my body weight. Yeah, I was really into weight lifting.

Sprinting, I could go from seated to a 100-yard dash in under a minute. But sustained running, I would be hard pressed to run a three-minute mile. With full gear equaled to a 50-pound knapsack, it was closer to five minutes. As I have said before, I don't run for the sport of it.

Chin ups, sit ups, push ups- "fuhgeddaboudit!" (In my best Brooklyn accent). Not that I didn't do them, but max twenty-five was my limit. I just didn't bother most times. But ask me to climb a tree, or crawl through muck to get a patient or chase children, I was first in line.

So is it any wonder why I don't strive for physical fitness after my stroke? Why? I've got a bum ticker (heart sick). I still have poor lung capacity since birth. I do what I have to do and that's a lot physically. Doing exercise for the sake of exercise was not part of who I am. There's got to be a useful goal in mind other than be physically fit...like lifting patients or chasing children.

What I lack in physical fitness, I made up for brain fitness. I was the type of person who could utilize their full brain. Both left and right sides at the same time. I knew I'd never be a contender for the physical, but in the brain I could excel.

So what did I go and do? Have a stroke that damaged my brain. Now, my stroke was in the left hemisphere. Languages, math, and all sort of very useful items in daily living are centered there including control of my predominant right side. Like thinking linearly, I have a very hard time doing. Sequencing is an important factor in speaking and writing.

For example, yesterday I went for an AFO adjustment. It was 4 pm and had a day full of hospice, husband care issues, and just living. I was beyond tired. With my aphasia, the combination is a no win situation. I found I couldn't find the right words to explain what was wrong with the brace. Too much pressure on my big toe and ankle. Also the sole on my functioning side shoe had a bubble form between the applied build-up and the original sole.

All that would roll around in my debilitated brain and what came out of my mouth was, "hurt," "can't walk," "cut," and blow out." I was repeatedly hitting my brace while trying to speak. I ended up pulling my shoe, AFO and sock off, and showing the brace maker what the problem was. It was all my unfit left brain function going berserk. Luckily, he understood and fixed the problems. With aphasia, if all else fails--point. Funny thing is, I can type my words better than speaking them. That how I blog even with aphasia. A thesaurus helps too in finding proper words.

So while I'm exercising to regain my function of defunct body parts, I'm focusing on getting my mental fitness in order with online games.

To be physically fit, I don't bother and never strive for it other than get use back. I realize it's a no win task. But mental fitness and acuity, that's a goal I can work towards.

Nothing is impossible with determination.

Exercise After a Stroke

This was forwarded to me by my local stroke group, Brain Reconnect. When you are in hospital rehab, they throw fifty million different things at you in the way of exercises. You'd be lucky to remember half of them and they might not be continued by your hometown therapist.

Such was the case with me. While I remembered all the exercises that had to do with my drop foot, and ham string, I forgot the exercise for my Achilles tendon stretches thus I got a contracture of, you guessed it, my Achilles tendon. It's a lot better the prevent it than trying to fix it.

The program is called "Stroke class with Susan" and it is on YouTube. This one exercise would have saved me a lot of pain, built up shoes and AFO modifications.

Anyhow, I've spent the week emailing back and forth with Darren Baxendale, the business manager, about this stroke class. Because it's new and I thought it would be helpful to us stroke survivors.

The website just just touts a free trial with the first session starting tomorrow, 9/10/2014, but it's whenever you can tune in. That is a definite draw for me. Before I fell in love with the class, I wanted to know what it was going to cost me when the free trial ran out.  As tight as our personal finances are, I didn't want to take the chance of losing another thing that could help me.

The answer is...they don't know how much to charge yet. It's an interest gauging type thing so that's why it is a trial. So I signed up for the trial. It is supposed to run weekly so I'll just have to wait and see like everyone else. I just hope I can swing it because if nothing else, it might add some oomph to my routine. I'm always looking for new ways to do stuff, aren't you?

All the videos will run like the one above and be more involved. Hopefully, Darren will answer the questions I sent him in my last email and I'll get some more information. As I get it, I'll pass it on to you. Maybe even do some PR for them with an interview.

Nothing is impossible with determination.