Walking on the treadmill again

Many thanks to the (slightly annoying) narrator Mackenzie.

This week

My schedule the past week or so has been a bit unorthodox, so I thought I'd clue everyone in to what I've been up to, or, as I like to call it, 'the happs'. I've been taking a break from therapy in order for my neck stitches to heal and the scar not look all gnarly, so I've been finding other ways to occupy my time. Monday evening, my grandparents and I attended a debate downtown between Jonathan Alter, a Newsweek columnist and Amity Schales, a conservative author and pundit. The topic was the effectiveness of the New Deal on the US' recovery from the Great Depression. This obviously is relevant these days as well, as we try to recover from the 'Great Recession'. Check out my notes from the speech after the jump.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays the past month and a half or so I've been interning at Hanon McKendry, a brand consulting and advertising firm downtown GR. It's been a great opportunity not only to get some experience in the marketing and advertising world but also just be in an office and around a business. You can't knock til you try it, so I wanted to try it out and see firsthand what it is like. I enjoy both sides of the business, both the statistics based strategy aspect as well as the creative side. So I'll be there a while longer and see how it goes.

I returned to therapy today after a couple days off, and had several revelations. First, a couple days off can wreak havoc on your conditioning; it was obvious why swimmers and runners train on Christmas when I was huffing and puffing after just a few minutes. Second, we identified some tightness in my hip that's been causing me some issues in my gait, a literal 'hitch' in my step, and promptly stretched it out into oblivion. It's amazing how much your pelvis rotates and moves as you walk just straight ahead; I can't even imagine side to side. Loosening that up made a huge difference.

We're headed to AA for the football again tomorrow; for those keep score, my predictions are 6-0. And with a Div 1-AA team coming in, I'm confident in a win.
And...a bear on ladder to take you into the weekend.

I survive!

Yay! Surgery was a grand success, and despite some lingering drowsiness yesterday afternoon, I was totally fine. The doc wanted me to stay over night as a precaution, to make sure air from my trachea wasn't leaking out under the flap of skin/muscle that was pulled over the dent in my throat. The stretching of one of the vertical muscles in my neck horizontally to make a flap over the hole the surgeon cut out has resulted in some soreness. Right now, my throat's a little stiff, but once the muscles loosen up, things should be back to normal. I was looking forward to popping some Vicodins, you know, for 'pain management', but the nurse warned me they tend to 'bind you up' (read: severe constipation) so I passed on the pills. The stitches come out next week Thursday, so I'll be taking it easy until then. Gotta make sure this scar stays nice and pretty, I guess, so no therapy for a little while either. But at least now I'll have the time to make some progress on my Tivo queue; it was getting backed up.

Ugh, surgery tomorrow.

Don't worry, it's nothing serious, although not as flippant as 2008's calf implant debacle. (For the record, my calves are all natural.) I'm getting the site at the base of my throat where my trach was worked on a little bit. Mostly for functional reasons, it still leaks air occasionally and has the potential to leak water in the shower or lake (not that I want to go in the lake anyway), making the possibility of infection a real and ever present threat. There might be a cosmetic reasoning behind it too, it looks like something you'd find on a zombie or Spartan, not yours truly, and it prevents me from rocking my favorite v-neck shirts. Which is unacceptable. So wish me luck, and pray for a swift recovery. I have to spend the night (lame!) so hopefully during my 24+ hours there, I'll find some way to amuse myself. Here's a photo of the horror -


Kind of a blurry picture - luckily, I guess, or you'd be scrambling to get away from your screen, and blocking the view of your loved ones and small children. It's basically an indentation like I got shot by a quarter and my throat was made of silly putty. Or something like that.

Another video

SCI Research Update

Here's a link to an exciting new research breakthrough that was featured on the Today Show this morning. (No, I'm not a regular watcher of the Today Show. I'm a View guy, everyone knows that.) It involves rats, as most trials do at their earliest stages, who undergo a controlled spinal cord injury, and with the help of electrical stimulation and daily ambulation on a treadmill similar, albeit smaller, to the one I use, the rats have been experiencing exciting results.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/32950285#32950285

Walking

Here is some long awaited video. I walk like this, using the harness and treadmill or over ground, at least two times per week. As my leg strength has returned, it has become easier and some of the forward swing of the leg is being supplied by yours truly. Not much, but some. Stay tuned for more video to come.