Gehbarren: rehabilitation

Sorry for the sparse, blog posts so far in April. I will try to rectify that before the month is finished. I wrote this before I left for my holidays, which I will get into in another article, but I didn't get a chance to publish it. More great news from a very productive week (the week before my holiday). Monday saw the approval-in-principal by the pension board of my "Leistungen zur Teilhabe am Arbeitsleben", which means that I have a little less pressure on me to get back to work. In other words, I can be reintegrated to work with the financial support of the German government, who will pay a % of my wages until such time as I'm ready to be fully reintegrated. It will also mean that the reintegration process can be managed by a third party who have lots of experience with this kind of stuff. I will likely gain some experience working for another company before I return to Eon.

As well as that, I finally cracked the Gehbarren, by settling on an advantageous use of it (I have since re-cracked it). I started this week with 5 Gehbarrens as usual, but they're good Gehbarrens. With Youtube playing songs in the background, I get cracking as follows. I basically have 3 modes (now 4): walking, stepping and balance training. I switch from one to the next after each song and it has been very rewarding. Here's a brief description of each:

Walking:

Here I simply walk over and back, using my right arm for support, with proper confident steps. Making sure to keep my back straight, with a slight bend in my knee, especially the left, while stepping with the opposite:

Stepping:

I owe this one to my physio. One of the problems that exist for my cane walking is that I consistently fail to bring my right foot past my left foot while stepping, which often leads me to lose balance and fall. Anna identified that this is due to weakness in my hip and knee on my left side, so it was felt that these could both be strengthened with this excercise. The subsequent stepping procedure should be safer.

 

Balance Training:

This would be a rest for ableds, but not me. For the duration of the song I simply stand with my feet as close together as is comfortable. I then pivot from my hip up, looking left then right, turning my shoulders and head as I look; or look up to the ceiling then down to my feet. It should feel as though you could almost, but not quite, lose your balance and fall. Take that! cerebellum.

Unsupported:

This isn't quite ready for publication yet, but I try to walk over and back unsupported, for the duration of a song. This is the most recent inclusion to my session, having been suggested to me by my physio on holidays, who you'll hear more about in a future blog post. 

Armed with this new and improved usage of the Gehbarren, my home training finally has much needed focus. I can also more easily keep track of any improvements.