Physical Therapy

There is a white board in every hospital room that tells the date, nurse on duty, diet, husband’s name, and goals for the patient. My goal after coming out of the coma was to sit up in a stretcher chair. The chair is called such because it can lay totally flat so the nurses can lay you in it, then they slowly sit you up.

I needed to use this char because I couldn’t stand or walk yet. Physical therapy hadn’t started yet, so the nurses weren’t taking any risks before I had further evaluations.

My goal on the board was to sit up in the stretcher chair for 1 hour. Being a Type A, goal oriented person, I was determined to meet my goals in the timeline given by the doctors and nurses. I wasn’t going to be the slacker of the class! However, I was SO tired. I was still sleeping a lot during the day, and at this time, I still thought every time I woke up was a new day. I was getting more and more dejected because I thought I was failing my goals! I really don’t know how long that goal was on the board, max 2 days in my guess, but at the time, I thought it had been up for a week without me even attempting to leave my bed.

The first time I was put in the chair was Tuesday night so I could watch The Biggest Loser finale with my mom and dad. I made it 1 hour and 30 minutes sitting up! It may not sound like much, but that is a LONG time when you’ve been flat on your back for weeks on end.

My dad sat next to me and held my hand throughout the show. I love my mom and dad.

Shortly thereafter, I began physical and occupational therapy in my room. Physical therapy focuses on gross motor movement, mostly walking and moving your lower extremities. Occupational therapy focuses on life skills (cooking, getting around your house, grocery shopping, etc.) and upper extremity movement.

In physical therapy, we started with sitting up. What a process just to get me sitting on the side of my bed! Once I was sitting, the therapist asked if I could sit here for 1 hour.

One hour?!? How about 1 minute?

After being on my back for so long, at this point we are going on 1 full week of not even sitting up coupled with weeks of bed rest, it is a very dizzying, strange feeling to sit up. Kind of a nauseous, lightheadedness is what it feels like. The only thing you want to do is lay back down.

She decided that we could sit up for 20 minutes instead. It still felt like forever!

The weirdest part for me as therapy began is the realization of the weight of my body parts. When you weigh yourself, and you see the number, say 100 pounds, you don’t think, “That could mean that each of my legs weighs 20ish pounds.” I’d never thought of my head as weighing any amount at all. I’m here to tell you it’s heavy!

The first few time sitting up I had to be reminded to hold my head up and look straight ahead. I just let it kind of dangle forward toward my chest.

The blessing now is that I have movement! Some of my muscles are beginning to respond which is great. No movement in my arm or hand yet, but that is going to take time, if it does come back at all.

The physical therapists wanted to get me walking as soon as possible. It took two therapists or Dan and a therapist on either side to hold me up and “walk.” It was more of a shuffle with heavy help for my human crutches. But, Praise the Lord, I was up out of bed.