I had a good day, but just now tried to step over a baby gate in the doorway. My legs felt pretty good and I was walking slowly without crutches in the house. I figured it might be a little tough to get over the gate, but possible, and I'd do it quick so it wouldn't hurt. Big mistake! I hung onto the door frame and got my left leg over -- then got stuck. After standing there a moment I pulled my left leg back over. If I'd thought harder I would have popped the gate out of the doorway and slid it out from there. Instead I panicked and repeated the thing that hurt so much! But at least the other leg didn't get fucked up.
The side of my hip and the long muscles down the side of my leg went crazy. I ended up in bed unable to stop thinking about it. Zond-7 did some passive lifting and stretching. That helped enormously! Afterwards I realized that moving my leg enough to turn back over onto my other side was going to set it off again. So he flipped me over. I have to say that was a bit humiliating to realize I was at the point of asking someone to turn me over in bed. He didn't mind... and I didn't mind so much since it was him and he began babbling with a maniacal grin about having always wanted to be a butler.
So lesson one is that I have got to be a little more cautious about doing things. Lesson two is that moving "quick because it might hurt" is exactly wrong because that triggers spasticity. Lesson three is that passive stretching and range of motion really rocks to calm down immediate spasms. Lesson four is to ask for help (as with turning over) because that also saved me a lot of pain.
You realize the thing is I couldn't tell it was going to happen. I felt relatively good, good enough to try to do it. I have to keep doing things like this and yet when I do, it's a risk that could result in a lot of pain and difficulty.
About half an hour after this I got up to go to the bathroom and found I couldn't get my left leg to hold any, or much, weight. Ha! So I crutched over to the bathroom very painfully having to sort of fling my legs forward and use them as pivots and then crutch forward again with my weight mostly on my arms. Ow!
Back in bed! More passive stretching! Just a little bit of passive stretching (less stretching than just someone else moving my leg around) goes further than an hour of attempts at deep massage. I'm having fantasies of a pulley in the ceiling and a sort of strap thing that I can snap around my leg. Then I could haul on a rope and move my legs around and it would feel very awesome.
I'm on 10 mg of baclofen at night now. I can't tell if it's hurting or helping.
This is a good book that I might buy: Upper Motor Neurone Syndrome and Spasticity: Clinical Management and Neurophysiology. I'm reading all the bits that are online in the preview of the book.
Gar, that sounds horrible. D mentioned this last night. We have baby gates from Ikea that click open and closed - of course I can't find them on the site now - but would those help? Or would it be too hard to unclick them on crutches?
Posted by: Yatima | January 02, 2008 at 05:08 PM
Hey, are you taking B12? It can't possibly hurt, and could possibly help.
Posted by: Pretty Lady | January 02, 2008 at 08:18 PM