Wednesday
Today has been a good day so far. After beginning the week on Sunday with a wrenched left knee, I was discouraged and afraid that I had caused myself a setback in my recovery.
After ice and ibuprofen my knee is feeling better and it has allowed me to get back to my normal activity of strengthening my legs and walking again.
I started on the auto ambulator this morning with Meredith. It is totally the coolest experience walking with robotics moving my legs in a manner that they have a moved for many many years. It takes about 10 minutes put all the harnesses around my waist and set me up on the treadmill. When we started we started with no weight just moving my legs the way they’re supposed to move when I’m walking. Then as I continued to walk they lowered me to the treadmill adding about 20% of my weight to my legs. I started with small stride length and the goal is to move to medium and then long stride length. Today I moved at about 1 mph on the treadmill. On this particular device I am limited to one and a half miles per hour as my maximum speed. In comparison to the light gate where to this point my maximum speed has been .5 mph.
As I walked on the auto ambulator rather then robotics to do the work I automatically wanted to take over. This wasn’t a bad thing, but rather the direction in which I’ll be going as I improve. I’m excited!
