Neurorehabilitation From the Trenches: Push It

It has been relatively easy for me to get into a position to submit an article like this one. It has been made easy (or easier than it may otherwise have been, anyway).

The main theme of this article will be that what is required in an extreme circumstance, such as this, is very unpleasant and the sooner you can come to terms with that, the sooner you can start sprinting toward independence.

I recently got a new neurologist, here, in Bergedorf. My initial appointment was very helpful but also quite stressful, for me, not for Claire. Firstly, I should preface this with the fact that I am a type-B personality while Claire is definitely a type-A. I remember the neurologist uttering the words that must have been music to Claire’s ears while they left me feeling pretty nervous. “Your rehabilitation needs to be intense.... you will have to train for more than three hours daily for the next years and after maybe three years you will still have to put in a minimum of 1.5 hours every day to remain fit." My fear is almost entirely based on the fact that I am a 6 foot 2 inch (188 centimeters) man without any real coordination or balance; it’s a long way down to what is often very unforgiving terrain. With those words he had unleashed a pit bull on me. I shall let the pit bull speak:

Not all situations can be resolved but it became clear at the start from sheer observation that the basics were there with Declan, then you study some research papers and you find that this requires hard work. Free will arguments aside, from a purely physiological perspective, the human body can achieve ‘wonders’. Think of an Ironman in less than 8 hours. Those athletes aren’t superhuman. Declan's level of paralysis and spasticity simply aren’t bad enough not to be overcome by a bit of hard training. What’s annoying, I remember some nurse in Malta saying, "don't google things", as if we were all too stupid to read up on unknown subject matter. It seems that this is generally the advice rather than saying, yes, you have to work three times harder than you did yesterday. Even though the latter thought is so comforting. It’s comforting to know that you can shape who you will become.

In the end, the mixture of type A and type B personalities may have been the key to Declan finally trooping up that hill yesterday. I could not have remained as cool as Declan. While his at times laissez-faire approach drives me bonkers, he, unlike most people in this situation, kept positive and never shed a tear (weirdo).

That’s it for this week. I’ll hopefully get one more in before this month’s end, which will make this a rare 6+-article-month-without-any-guest-articles. So I’ll take this opportunity to, once again, invite all readers to please submit a guest article to declan.treanor@gmail.com.

German oder English is fine.

My Tree

This has been a very good week for my tree. I got some flowers and an onlooker.