Stepping Up

 It has been a little over 14 months since I was—finally--released from the hospital after a seven-month-long stay spread across three institutions in Tokyo. About a month after that, I started rehabilitation at a hospital-connected day care/rehab facility near my house.

At first, I was essentially unable to stand up unaided, and the apex of my physical accomplishment was an increased facility in transferring from wheelchair to bed and back. For a long time my legs hadn’t been able to obey my brain’s commands, and the lengthy hospital stay had led to significant muscle atrophy to go along with the spinal nerve issues. The very dedicated and professional physical and occupational therapists (PTs and OTs) had done their best, including arranging to borrow some specialized equipment to help start me walking again, but the conditions weren’t ideal and when I left the hospital I had a long way still to go.

The very able supervision and assistance of an extremely capable care manager--an ex-nurse who managed to be simultaneously compassionate, competent, friendly, and incisive—made all sorts of arrangements for renting equipment such as wheelchair, lift, etc., for selecting and scheduling home helper and nurses, and for securing transportation infinitely easier. Her help with navigating the complicated paperwork involved in welfare, insurance, and tax issues was absolutely invaluable. She has recently taken a leave of absence, and has been replaced by another lady who has so far also been quite helpful and kind.

Since leaving the hospital and returning home, I’ve been spending about three days a week at the day care/rehab place, working my way through various exercises with the help of a new set of hard-working, friendly therapists, nurses, and support staff, using a succession of equipment.

I’ve come up from barely capable of standing up from my wheelchair at the parallel bars, to striding along pretty smoothly with the aid of a “pickup walker” (i.e., one without wheels, that you pick up and set down ahead of yourself as you walk along).

For the last couple of months I’ve been fortunate to have another PT making weekly visits to my home, to help with tactics and tricks for specific functions such as cooking, showering, and the like in that more straitened environment.

While broadly aiming at increasing strength and restoring mobility overall, the current therapy focus is on climbing and descending steps and dealing with slopes and uneven surfaces. Walking smoothly on flat flooring is one thing, but my study is raised 15 cm from the next room, and climbing up that step was essential to being able to use Barghest, my desktop PC, and to accessing the books with which my study is lined floor to ceiling. Then there's the genkan, which as with most Japanese houses requires stepping up into the house from outside. My yard is far from even-surfaced. There’s my car, too, an SUV with a floorboard fairly high off the ground, but that’s a topic for another post.

So far, I’ve finally been successful in accessing my study—I now spend a major portion of my waking hours there--and have become progressively smoother getting into and out of the house through the genkan. Climbing steps is an important milestone along my mobility journey, and I’ve been stepping up to it with a will.