Fish, Flexion and Fun

Chester and I spent a lovely weekend together, savoring the time we have with one another before my 12 days at home while out-of-town friends are visiting. It is always a sweet sorrow to pack my bags and prepare to go back across the bay to San Francisco- while I need and welcome the rest, opportunity to catch up with friends, the chance to make some income, and the change of pace, it is also so difficult to be away from Chester. So much of my presence and awareness stays here with him even when I am away, and this split is difficult to settle in to. And while Chester welcomes the chance to see his other companions, we have a rhythm and ease in living together that is comforting for him. And so we celebrate our time together, and make lots of allowance for the time apart. We enjoyed our last evening together with a sushi feast and watched "Madagascar", a very funny animated feature about zoo animals who find themselves in the wild. We laughed heartily at the animal antics and danced along with the lemurs.

Today was another good day of rehabilitation. The highlight of the weekend (other than the quality time together) was Chester's dorsal flexion in his right foot!!! To explain- If you pull your toes towards your knee, you are experiencing dorsal flexion. This action is a critical one for proper walking and balance, and is controlled by very small muscles in the foot and ankle. Regaining this action will be key for Chester being able to walk more independently. To date, he has only been able to actively flex his foot a couple of times. But over the last few days, we have witnessed two distinct times where he was able to activate dorsal flexion three or four times before the muscles fatigued and quieted. Funny that such a small action can feel like such a huge victory! This also points to the overall reclamation of his right leg, which is coming more and more online as more muscles are activating.

His Occupational Therapist worked with his arm today and continued to work wonders. She coaches him through many different exercises and stretches to smooth out his arm and shoulder, stretch the muscles and begin to activate them. It is coming back much more slowly than his leg, but there is definite activation. It is not a "dead arm" at all. Our main focus with his right arm is to keep it smoothed out and extended. There are many more flexor muscles than extenders in the arm, and they tend to activate faster than the extenders. This leads to the curled and locked arm that is so common in disabled folks. By constantly relaxing and extending his shoulder, elbow, wrist and fingers, we are countering that tendency and keeping it loose. This is a daily practice- after every walk or exertion, or any time Chester gets excited or anxious, we need to actively smooth out his arm so it doesn't lock up. I have found that his hand particularly relaxes when I smooth it by dragging it over my own arm and hand- allowing his hand to "massage" me. His hand seems to know and love this, and it always seems to relax when it is in contact with other flesh. He wears a hand paddle most of the time and now June has him rigged up so his hand stays on his lap and doesn't get banged around so much.

First thing in the morning Chester will begin his chemotherapy course. Please send him love and support as he once again unleashes the "chemical predators" into his system to hunt out and devour the tumor cells. He will be having a quiet week, resting a lot and still trying to do as much rehabilitation as he is able. We'll keep you posted as the week progresses.

Wishing you all a beautiful and restful week!