Three Weeks in Rehab – Day Eleven
The day begins with a weekend review. This is everyone taking it in turns to say how (or how they didn’t) meet their goals we have to set each week. I didn’t meet a couple of mine, but I imply I did, as I don’t want to start the weekly with a lecture! I spent most of the weekend doing absolutely nothing, but hey what’s wrong with that after such a packed week?
Next up is Anatomy and Healing. It’s almost exactly the same talk from the week before. I hate it when they do this – they repeat some of them and they are mandatory to attend. The session runs better than the previous Anatomy one that ran though!
New people have arrived for their programme, and we meet them better at lunch. They’re all a bit older and quieter than the last two weeks. After lunch I have a Wii Fit session, looking at balance. It’s really hard and I’m crap at most of the games but the Wii does make it more interesting than a balance board. I find standing very painful, but I have a chair next to me so I can keep sitting down.
Later on I have physio. We do a lot more core work, then she decides she wants me to do some walking tolerance. This makes my heart sink, as I’m quite walking intolerant, thank you very much. This is something I’ve explained to her at length. I get a feeling when some doctors/physios see you in a wheelchair, they believe you’re using it all the time. It isn’t the case – I try my best to walk when I can – even just a few steps. If I go over my limit I’m in agony for hours. This limit can differ – some days any walking is too painful, other times I can walk very short distances As part of this walking tolerance she encourages me to walk my limit, sit down, and then walk it again. We go to the gym based at the swimming pool, as the equipment in the physio room is very poor. (It consists of two broken exercise bikes!)
It pretty much looks like this.
We walk back from the gym and I really struggle. My hip goes into spasm and I feel awful. My physio then says cheerily that tomorrow we’ll walk further. I believe this to be badly judged.
Our final session is yet another repeat – Pacing. It’s very brief, but still dull. Yes, yes, we get it. Pace everything, except all those things where it’s impossible. I’m getting a bit negative now with this programme. It really isn’t what I expected.
I am exhausted and go to bed at 9pm, but two people on the other side of the wall to me are talking too loudly for any actual sleep to happen.