Life in the hospital ward

After the operation on my back I had come to a point that my energy level had dropped to an all time low. After having had the blood transfusion I slowly started to regain some strength. The muscles in my legs had no tonus whatsoever and that means that my journey to rehabilitate starts at the absolute beginning. I have to learn to sit, stand, and hopefully walk again.


The first 5 days it was necessary to regain energy. That is hard if you staying in medium care because it's too roudy to sleep properly. They wanted me to stablize before moving me to another room.

When I had been moved we immediately began to mobilize. Simply sitting up in bed is proving to be a problem as, now, my whole back is scaffolded from the top to the bottom. Strangely I am not in too much pain. The first exercise therfore became to practice sitting upright. I use the mechnics of the bed to get me upright. Nurses and physical therapists ask me to teach them how the bed works. LOL! The bed is also instrumental in getting me to sit on the side of the bed and therefore that became exercise #2. By the day before yesterday I tried to stand. It took two people to hold me. I had too little strength and my legs slipped away.
I knew that exercises in bed would make my muscles stronger so I had already started to exercise staticly in the other room. By this time I was doing those exercises every hour.

It payed off, because yesterday, I managed to stand with my own strength for 30 seconds and today I managed to stand up 2x and take one step. I bet that you can see an upward pattern. I have left the beginnings behind me now. I look forward to each new step that I take.

I am in a fun room with a man who had a stroke and with Gregory who I know from the reggae concerts. Imagine having this next to you...what a treat!!

In the mean time I have had mostly family visits. This up coming week it should be OK to have more people visit.


As for the next period: a new treatment plan is being made.
We have started to reduce the Dexamethasone dose. I am so happy about that because I have started to grow a moustache. Thank God for wax strips! Now lets just hope I don't lose too much strength.