If you’ve been following my recovery and reading my blog for a while, you may remember the post I wrote about waking up one morning and being able to wiggle my pinky toe with full control. This happened six months after my injury and at the time, I thought it heralded the process of most every muscle in my body slowly but consistently coming back under my full control. I was wrong…
In the two and a half years since, I have worked harder towards my recovery than anything else in my life. My day to day life was, and is still, 100% focused on recovery and on working towards my all important goal of getting back on my feet and walking. But despite all of that hard work, I didn’t regain function the way I was expecting. It was more than a little disheartening to regain full control of a body part, expect it to continue, and then tick off the days and weeks that went by without any further recovery of function. I’ve obviously made a huge amount of progress since then, which I don’t want to discount, but there was something so satisfying about regaining absolute control of any body part in my lower body that I didn’t experience since then… until now.
It seems that the pinky toe wanted a friend, that it became lonely and wanted a companion to dance along with it on my right foot. We’ve all been in that situation at a party, work event, or gathering where we don’t know anyone, where we long for companionship, where we hit the apex of desperation for someone, just anyone, to come along and give us a reprieve from our isolation. (Ok I admit that’s a little over dramatic but just humor me…).
Well the wait is over for my pinky toe.
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed something different in my right foot and when I looked down, I saw the second toe, the Co-Captain of the toes (yes that’s a Seinfeld reference, enjoy), wanting to join the movement train. Unlike the pinky though, moving the second toe was very subtle at first. I had to try really hard to make it move. But once that pathway of communication to the toe was open, all I had to do was hammer it over and over and over. And everyday after that, it became stronger to the point where now I have 95% control of it.
Ok so you may be thinking, “What is so important about a toe? How does that help with the goal of walking?” Well the answer is simple. If all of my recovery was supposed to stop after one or two years, like the doctors predicted, then the fact that I’ve regained control of any part of my lower body confirms how bogus that thinking is. More importantly, it shows that a new communication pathway has been established from my brain, that a signal that previously couldn’t get through is now able to make its way to its destination. And if that’s possible, three years after my injury, then anything is possible from here on out. New pathways can be established, new muscles can be innervated, new movements can occur and the hope of regaining more function is very much alive.
It may just be a toe but it’s a validation, however small, that everything I’m working on is leading to results, and that more recovery is going to come.
Arash Recovery 