Stroke Recovery: therapy moments

Marker welcomes us back to our town during a bridge walk.

Husband Walter and I were out yesterday morning with the sunrise, driving a few miles to the Biloxi Bay Bridge that connects Ocean Springs to Biloxi, our neighbor across the bay.

The bridge is one of my favorite destinations for “walking therapy.” I always carry my little Canon point-and-shoot camera on bridge walks. Attempting to hold my camera steady is a good exercise in balancing. 

But I grow more like my Hubby as the years pass. Our interest in shooting pictures, well, really our interest in any outdoor activity, increases as the temperature decreases.

 Hubby experiments with a new-to-him pocket-sized camera.

This Thursday morning was pleasantly cool. In the early morning light I pulled out my camera to document that my therapeutic walking encompassed two cities and two counties.

I had set a goal for myself to walk the length of the bridge and back by the end of September. When I set that goal, most of 2013 was still in the future. Weather, toe problems, travel and family priorities—our family circumstances as well as those of walking buddies, kept postponing any consistent walking.

Now there are just 10 days left until September 30. On this latest excursion the farthest I walked was a little more than .7 mile, 1.4 miles roundtrip. That is less than half the distance of the round trip from our side of the bridge to the Biloxi end and back.

Whether I accomplish my goal by September 30, 2013, or not, I am just happy to be back walking.

I am also happy to be back in physical therapy for a “tune up” on my walking. Ashley, my physical therapist and director of the Ocean Springs Hospital Neuro Rehab Clinic, finds so many ways to help make my parts work better together and to jump start those that are not working much at all.

One difference in my recent therapy has been inclusion of the adjacent pediatric gym and its connecting hallways in my walking circuit. I have been in there twice now, once when the gym was empty of youngsters and once when little ones were in therapy. I could hear them but only saw blurs. The maneuvers Ashley had me doing required my total attention.

Evidently the pediatric therapists are including the adult gym in the kids’ walking, too. As I was making my way across the gym to exit after my therapy session yesterday, there was a slim little chocolate brown youngster maybe four years old, probably younger. 

My eyes went first to his feet. He wore happy-looking neon, watermelon-red flippers, the kind kids wear swimming.

“Brilliant therapy strategy,” was my first thought. With those flippers on, he had to lift his knees and feet up high with each step to walk. 

The second impression hit me hard. His beautiful eyes, framed by long black lashes, were serious. This struggle is his life. He was dealing. The stoicism of that little one turned me into a blubbering, runny-nosed mess in the few yards it took me to exit to the waiting room.

Thoughts about my reaction and about the future of that little boy and other pediatric rehab patients have now taken up permanent residence in my brain.