The last post contained mostly my waxing poetic about physical therapy and my new fascination with stretching. Today I would like to continue with why PT is so useful to the lives of those of us lucky buggers drafted into this fascinating disease.
There is a great introduction to physical therapy for MS at WebMD.com. They list several issues with MS that physical therapy can help. I will discuss those with which I have personal experience. Stretching is helpful for flexibility, but also to combat the clumsiness that leads to falls. My experience has been that stiff legs don't easily make the hundreds of tiny adjustments needed to keep one's balance. A great incentive to stretch is just falling straight-legged on your back from standing once. It hurt, but scared me more. It was like being kidnapped by gravity!
Clumsiness is another issue. My brain knows that to cut my steak, I need to hold the steak still on the plate with my left hand, while sawing through it with my right hand holding the knife. Damn, I miss that being easy! This week, I was rather successfully eating my delicious steak, lovingly prepared for me, and I dropped my fork, which rolled into my lap, along with the steak!! Ah, well, my lap is better than the floor, certainly.
This leads me to my favorite new word, proprioception. It means knowing where your body is through your senses. That's tricky when your information highway is mangled!! I will just have to keep going until my body can create some bypasses with neuroplasticity. Thank heavens for that, so my brain can stretch to hold new vocabulary!!
See you tomorrow!
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