Standing tall

Linda's tallest accomplishment today was standing. I know this doesn't sound like that big a deal since she has been standing for quite a while, but actually it is. The difference is that today she was working on standing balance. She had no Fred (in fact she was working with a different therapist), no frame, and no bars to hold on to.

Actually that is a bit of an exaggeration. She did in reality do the whole exercise between the parallel bars, and the therapist did catch her when she lost her balance which happened quite a bit. But the focus of the activity was standing without help. Her strong inclination (which is common in recovery) is to bend too much at the waist and stand too far back on her feet. That is she wants to fall backward on her butt.

So today they worked on what we would call in karate "tucking your butt" and standing forward more on the fronts of her feet. Then she can balance, and she did a pretty good job of it. She asked to do it again in her afternoon PT session as well, and was able to stand for 1 min 10 sec without any help.


We baked brownies in occupational therapy. It sounds like goofing off, but mundane tasks are actually very hard. Just as one example, consider that everything at Rusk is built at wheelchair height, but the apartments have standard height counters just like home. Try cooking or doing the dishes sometime in your kitchen while sitting in a chair the whole time. Other simple things like stirring are a real coordination challenge, so it's quite an activity.

If we worked on life skills every day, I think it would kill her. Behind me, Linda murmurs, "It would."