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My Weekly Journal – 12/17 Through 12/23
Monday, December 17, Through Sunday, December 23 – I can only speak for myself, but 2018 seemed to fly by at the blink of an eye. This year has been filled with 95% joy, 2% heartache, 2% frustration and 1% of total confusion. I would say that I had a pretty good year, and I’m hoping that those of you that are following me on my YouTube channel and reading my weekly journal entries had just as good of a year or better.I told you that I had 2% of frustration during this year, and it all fell on Tuesday, when I went for my workout with Laura. Every four weeks, Laura has to reevaluate me to check my progress. She checks the muscle strength regarding my core strengthening exercises that we are doing, and she also takes measurements with regards to my range of motion and flexibility in my legs, knees, ankles and feet. This past Tuesday, was reevaluation day, and I can say that it was probably the most frustrating day that I have spent while working out. While I remained about the same with regards to my core strength, the flexibility in my ankles actually decreased quite significantly during the past month. It’s kinda like getting kicked in the teeth when your therapist tells you that you actually decreased instead of increased during the reevaluation. The flexibility and range of motion in my legs decreased slightly, but not really enough to concern either Laura or myself. She said that this would happen from time to time and she said not to really worry about those results. The results that caused the concern was when she was flexing my feet in an upward position. In my video, I state that we are trying to get my legs and my feet as close to 0° as possible, but the numbers that we got while checking my ankles and feet decreased quite a bit. While doing these measurements, Laura stated that my ankles seem to be significantly more swollen this reevaluation compared to the previous evaluations. As soon as she said that, I knew exactly who to blame. While I would love to be able to blame someone other than myself, I knew that this would not be a possibility. A few months ago, my internist prescribed hydrochlorothiazide, which is used to decrease swelling. I’m supposed to be taking one pill each day to control the swelling in my ankles, but due to me being bullheaded, I haven’t been taking these pills like I should’ve been. Laura said that the swelling was keeping her from flexing my feet as much as she should’ve been able to do, so my numbers were definitely skewed. Since I have no one else to blame but myself, I know what I need to do to improve the numbers for next month’s reevaluation. I will be taking my hydrochlorothiazide every day and while I don’t necessarily enjoy the fact that I have to pee every two hours after taking these pills, the decrease in swelling will definitely help get my numbers back toward the normal range. Click HERE to see my test results. For the next two weeks, I will be going to my workouts on Thursday, due to the Christmas and New Year’s holiday which fall on Tuesdays. Next week, when I go in for my workout with Laura, she will be transferring me out of my wheelchair onto the therapy table so that we can begin another round of range of motion exercises on my legs, knees, ankles and feet. Click HERE to view the pictures that Laura’s physical therapy assistant, Emily, took while we went through this reevaluation process. In two of the pictures, you can see the painful expressions that I made while Laura was measuring the amount of degrees that she can flex my ankles and my feet. In the picture were Laura is sitting to my left and flexing my left ankle and foot, you can tell by the position of my mouth as to what word I was about to yell out. If you need a clue as to what word I was about to scream, the word starts with the letter F, and rhymes with Tuck. If you need any further clues, please talk to your parents and have them explain the concept behind the birds and the bees.In this week’s video, I’m going to go over the results that Laura and I got during my four week reevaluation process. Every four weeks, Laura has to reevaluate my progress regarding the core strengthening exercises that we are doing, along with all of the measurements regarding my leg, foot, knee and ankle exercises. This past week when I went in for my workout with Laura, this was reevaluation day. During this process, Laura is physical therapy assistant, Emily, took pictures, and I put these pictures to 3 short videos about 50 seconds of each so that you can see exactly what happens. To be honest with you, I was extremely disappointed in the results that we got last week, and in this video, I detail exactly why we got the results that we did, and my plans on what needs to happen to improve these results before next month’s reevaluation. I would love to be able to blame someone else for the negative results that I got during my past reevaluation, but the only person that I can blame is myself. Click HERE to view my video. This will be my last video until Sunday, January 6. I’m going to take next week off so that I can be with family and friends during the Christmas holiday period. I wish all of my subscribers and followers, and their family members, a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Thank you for supporting me in 2018, and I look forward to bringing you more videos in 2019, that will hopefully give you some good information regarding my journey, and spinal muscular atrophy.I hope that all of you had a fantastic week and I hope that you do something for yourself this upcoming week that will make you a better person. God bless you, and I’ll see you in 2019. -
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