Quote:
Originally Posted by CRPSjames
I am so blessed. I hope to be back to work in the near future. I have been spending just about eight hours a day conditioning myself.
Now that tDCS has eliminated some of the symptoms that landed me in the wheelchair I have been building up my strength and tolerance for activity. I never would have believed this last January, but now I am tending a vegetable garden!!!!!!!!! Last week I transplanted some sun flowers that I had started in small pots. About 75 of them. I have planted them everywhere I find a space. Sunflowers are so cheerful and tenacious, and start out small but persistently quickly grow despite the heat and scorching sun. They represent my journey from recovering from the devastation cause in my body by the Boston Scientific spinal cord stimulator. Most people do not recover from spinal cord stimulator induced spreads of neuropathic pain and in fact, they become worse over time, losing more function.
Although I would not recommend a spinal cord stimulator to anyone who suffers from CRPS due to the high risk of spread tDCS may be an effective treatment for those CRPS folks who have had developed spreads from stimulators.
My family thinks I am a little nuts. At a family cookout I was being quizzed about why I didn't just plant four or five sunflowers. Didn't want to go there with the whole family so I just said, "because that is how many seeds were in the packets, pass the potato salad please."
Everybody here knows why I did it. Right????????
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I definitely get it! Sounds a lot like me...I've planted TONS of flowers this year and love walking out into the backyard and on the deck and seeing all the pretty, cheery flowers everywhere. My boyfriend gets it too...but he still laughs and teases me. I have all sorts of grand plans for the back yard and how I want to make MORE flower beds. I even bought a perennial garden book for Illinois and have started plotting out what I want to do next year.
I'm so happy to hear that things are going so well for you James. I think you are doing the smart thing trying to condition yourself with the activities before jumping right into the working. That's what I tried to do while I was off when they wouldn't let me back at first and I think that things worked out better for me because of it. If I had just gone back right away I don't think things would be going as good as they are right now. I tried my best to simulate the activities I do at work...but of course there's only so much you can do when you aren't actually AT work. Still...thanks to the conditioning and the work I did to build up my endurance I really haven't had any trouble being on my feet for 9-10 hours a day at work with little to no sitting during that time. Well...my feet were a little sore the first couple days but that was bound to happen...they've adjusted already.
I am so excited for you though. I'm doing a happy dance for you. Keep up the great work!