“My legs are responding well to me today.”
“C’mon quads, you’ve got enough strength in you for another few squats!”
“Usually it’s my right hip that is stronger but today my left hip is doing pretty well.”
Feeling a distinct separation between the upper and lower bodies is inevitable in Spinal Cord Injury. Obviously, the function of my hips and pelvis and legs and feet is very different from the function in my arms and chest and upper body. I recently starting noticing that my language had reflected this separation as well, that I was frequently talking about my legs as if they were a disconnected part of my body.
This was the result of progress after all. I had only recently started to feel more of a connection with my lower body because I had finally started to gain tiny traces of movement and control over parts of my legs, especially my quads. But with more progress comes greater expectations, at least for me. Since I had spent the better part of the last two or three months working on reestablishing that damaged yet still present connection to my legs by doing squats (like the ones I shared in a previous post), practicing standing with little assistance and modifying my walking exercises, I had started to expect more out of my legs.
I have written before about my belief of the importance of language and the power that words can have on healing and recovery. I’ve been conscious and careful about what words I use to describe myself or my body but somehow it took me a while to realize that referring to my legs as “they” and saying that “they’re responding well or not well to me” was falling into this trap that I had tried so desperately to avoid.
There is no “they” because it’s all “me”. And just because the signals getting through to my lower body are a bit weak doesn’t mean that they are cut off from the rest of me. So I will do my best to avoid this language misstep especially since I should be celebrating the fact that my legs are doing so much better and responding much more than they used to.
I’m always a bit hesitant to share videos of progress as I don’t ever want to give the wrong impression and lead people to think that I’m more healed than I actually am, but I decided it’s worth sharing the following two videos of my walking progress.
The main thing to notice in these videos (other than those incredibly fashionable leg braces that support my ankles) is that I’m locking out my own legs. In other words, my knees are not being held in place by the therapist (like they used to) and I’m able to initiate, establish and maintain one knee locked and stable while the other leg takes a step with assistance.
In the second video it’s harder to see the action of the knees but you can still see that the therapist is only helping me to complete the step forward. I’m doing most of the rest and if you pay attention to my right foot, you’ll see that I actually take a few steps with no assistance at all on that foot! It’s definitely sloppy, and it’s still a long ways to go, but it’s a start. I’ll take it.
Arash Recovery 