Walk A Mile

 I have a life of good intentions. This represents another one of those. 

Once my knees were sufficiently strengthened, I was going to get back into walking for exercise. It was going to be a few blocks building up to a few miles. I even bought new walking shoes. 

That was in May. Here it is August and I hadn't taken the shoes out of their original box. The highly considered walking program became another grand idea consigned to the 'maybe' pile. After looking at the box on the table in the living room I finally decided that these shoes were meant to be worn and although the idea was to use them only for walking and not errands or work, if I didn't actually wear them, they would sit on the table indefinitely. 

There was a reason I bought these. It's not just my hands and knees that have problems with RA. My feet do, as well. About 8 years ago, I started having cramps in my toes, particularly of my left foot. I had custom shoe inserts made which helped for a couple of years. But they were designed specifically for one shoe and I wear multiple kinds of shoes during a week, giving a pair a 'rest' between wearings. Now that I have RA, my toes can cramp unexpectedly and I find that when I have to be on my feet for extended periods of time, I need support in the ball of the foot. My toes need cushioning a lot more than the rest of the foot does. I must have tried on 15 different kinds of shoes before coming back to these. They were also on sale. 

A well-fitting pair of shoes energizes you. I came home after a day of wearing these around the office thinking I could, perhaps, get a walking program going after work. But then I got involved in another project and it got to be too late in the evening. Oh well. At least I'll look good in spite of not following through with my best of intentions. 

Beverage:  water

Deb

And All I Got Was This Tee Shirt.

For all intents and purposes, physical therapy is over. My last appointment was last week wherein Carrie beat up my knees. Of all the things she's done, which included make me walk in bondage, hold a ball between my knees (You are free to word associate here. I don't mind. It took us 5 minutes after she told me what I was going to do for us to stop laughing.) and then her working the knots out of my shoulder muscles, this was excruciatingly painful. I actually had her stop at one point because whatever she was doing hurt and sent shooting pain into my shins and my upper thigh. "Hmmmmm," she said. "It really shouldn't hurt that much." Ya think? But, redirected pressure and massage and then she could go back to the original pressure points. Something was awry and she fixed it.

It is now up to me to continue with the "fixing".

The thing is, even with pages and I do mean pages of exercises, nothing replaces or regrows cartilage lost due to injury or age. The best I can hope for is that the RA is sufficiently under control to stop or reduce joint damage and that the exercises I do strengthen the surrounding muscles to ease the pressure on the actual joints. Part of that exercise is to resume walking and, in order to do that, I'm buying actual walking shoes this weekend. The shoes I have don't provide enough support for my toes for steady walking. I can't be a mile from home and hobbling like an unshod mule because my toes have cramped something fierce. Shoes designed for walkers are the way to go, more expensive, to be sure, but they are what I need if I'm going to get back into this.

So, I said goodbye to Carrie's House of Torture. As a parting gift, I received the above tee shirt. I know. I know. I need another tee shirt like I need a Charly Horse at 2:30 a.m. (I've had those. They are such fun.) It's a nice, heavy weight tee and I know the stack I saw in the closet is factored into the cost of my therapy. Still, all my doctors are through this health service so, unless other doctors have these in other colors, one is all I need.

I have mixed feelings. I don't want to rack up more medical bills, but it is absolutely undeniable that physical therapy combined with the other changes to lifestyle and the diligence of my rheumatologist have made my life head and shoulders better than a year ago at this time. I never dreamed, even as far back as May of 2011, that I could feel this good. I need to build up my stamina and continue to strengthen my knees. Walking will do that.

I'm also going to miss Carrie and how she made this fun. As an example of her enthusiasm, when Flat Stanley was here, she jumped into the idea of making Stanley do some physical therapy. He waited patiently for our appointment.

Then she put him on the bike.

Once he was warmed up, she had him balance on an exercise ball while holding a weight.

After this, she had to check his balance. Stanley did so much better than I can ever do on the balance board.

When this was done, we tried to get Stanley to pull weights but he kept getting tangled up in the straps.

I'm told Dillon's classmates thought this whole thing was hilarious. What really got the laughs was when we weighed Stanley.

We really needed a baby scale or just a bathroom digital scale, neither of which they had. So we had to improvise. He stood on the scale part and then we moved the weights all the way to the right.

The kids recognized the scale and knew what moving the weights to the right meant. I guess Dillon got a big laugh out of his class when he read my comment that Carrie thought Stanley needed to lose a little weight.

I'm to check in next week for an update but I can be officially discharged. I'm sad but I'm happy too. Time to get out and explore the world, something back in January I never thought possible.

Beverage:  Irish Breakfast tea

Deb

Another Month

When did it get to be August? Wasn't it just a couple weeks ago I was frantically cleaning in preparation for Carole and David's visit over Memorial Day weekend? In one month, it will be Labor Day and the end, sort of, of summer. What have I done this summer?

Now, if I spend time assessing what I have done versus what I could have done, you'll find me sitting in a lawn chair in the basement eating a carton of ice cream. That is NOT productive on any level. There are times when personal assessment is a positive thing and then there are the self-flagellation sessions we females seem to specialize in. "I could have had a V-8" turns into, "I could have tiled my kitchen backsplash with ceramic tiles I made myself after I crafted a kiln out of bricks that I made myself." Um...yeah.

First of all, it was too darn hot. It was just not conducive to outdoor activity. I managed, however, to get the deck and the front steps painted, granted both were before the temperature rose to irritating heights. I'm proud of myself for that.

I washed deck chairs and planted flowers in pots on the deck. That's another plus for me. I've gone years with no outside furniture and only the geraniums to greet me. It's been too hot to really enjoy the deck but at least I got the chairs out. In October, a grand reorganization of the storage shed should be undertaken so the chairs are easy to get to next year, considering I did all this work.

Little projects here and there. A mountain of reading finished. Not a week goes by that I don't read one or two of the magazines in the ever diminishing stack. It's good to see it shrinking. In another year, it will be gone and the magazines I do get won't take me months to read.

It was in one of those magazines that I found what I'm going to call my "August project". It was an old Shape magazine. I have no idea how I got this. It just started showing up on my doorstep a year ago. For me, it's a 20 minute read, if that. There's nothing usually in it to interest me and I find it wholly disingenuous. It purports to give you tips on diet and exercise but has huge ads for weight loss supplements of dubious character. You can't have it both ways. Ooooh Holly Madison (Who the heck is she? Would someone enlighten me?) lost an amazing 20 pounds on something I wouldn't feed to a landfill. Looking at her, she had 20 pounds to lose? She could do that just taking off those embellished jeans she's wearing. That doesn't count. Hence, I give Shape no credibility when it comes to weight loss.

But, in the March 2012 issue, which somehow got buried as I usually "read" Shape the day it comes and then recycle it, there were exercises done with weights. I'm looking for non-impact, since my knees won't handle it at the moment, exercises that promote more strength and flexibility than aerobic activity. I looked these over. Bend the knee here? Well, I can modify this a bit. Stretch the arms out and hold it? Well, I won't be able to do 12 repetitions but I could do a few. For the first time since this magazine mysteriously showed up, it had something in it that I could use. I can't do all 6 exercises at a time. I don't have the strength yet. But I could do 3 a day, alternating days.

So, I dug out my weights and did my first three today. I could not do more than 3 reps of exercise number 2 which required me to hold my arms out at shoulder height and curl one arm, then the other, back behind my head. It sounds weird, but it's easy to do, except for holding the arms at shoulder height. It's painful after 3 reps. I don't have the upper arm strength.

I did not get dejected, however. I know I have a ways to go to rebuild what collapsed around me last year. My goal is simple. I will do half of the exercises every day for a week, alternating exercises. Page 1 was today and page 2 is tomorrow. When Sunday comes, I will try again for another week of exercises. It means earlier to bed and earlier to rise so I get these in. It took 15 minutes to do the first three. My goal is no achy feeling when I do 12 reps and to be able to do 12 reps on each exercise. I'm not going to do more reps on those exercises I find easy. Before I move on to 2 sets of 12 reps, I have to be able to do 1 set on all of them with ease and without pain or achy muscles. My ultimate goal is to do these every day through the whole of August, one week at a time.

I'm reminded of a song from the animated Christmas special "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". Mickey Rooney sings this.

Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door

You never will get where you’re going
If you never get up on your feet
Come on, there’s a good tail wind blowing
A fast walking man is hard to beat

My goal is greater flexibility and mobility. I found the Wheaton Park District has Tai Chi classes. They help with flexibility. I've found one I can take on Saturday mornings beginning in October. I'm signing up next week, as soon as I can.

This has been the most productive summer in the last 2-3 for me. As August starts and the end of summer draws near, I want to build on this success and go forward. I almost gave my weights away last year. It's a good thing I didn't. I'm pretty sure I can't bench press either of the cats.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb