Hi Everyone,

In taking stock of my year anniversary I did some more research into incomplete spinal cord injuries and have made some changes to my routine.

First off, I didn’t realize just how much going to the grocery store and trying to prepare healthy meals for a recovering body was stressing me out and exhausting me. Normally, I like doing it but moving around is still really hard and making the food on top of it was difficult to say the least since I’m also 1-handed right now. So, my friend hooked me up with someone who is working on a nutrition documentary who is now cooking for me. WOO HOO! I cannot adequately express what a relief it is to have her come 2x/wk. (note: her documentary show hows most heart surgeries can be avoided with vegetarian diets.)

I also added this cool Tibetan doctor into my routine and now I’m taking a bunch of herbs. It was extremely impressive how she diagnosed my low blood pressure (a result of the sugery), kidney/liver issue (hep a in college) by just putting her thumb on my wrist. No $200k devices there.

On the plus for western medicine, medicare just set a new standard for wearable e-stim devices, which means that I can fast forward my walking by getting help from a stimulation device that alleviates footdrop, my weakest link in the walking chain. I send in my paperwork this week, and hopefully will get the device this month, which means…. I will likely meet my goal of ditching the cane in April. YEA!

Lastly, I made a May appointment with the brucker biofeedback institute in Miami. This place pioneered the use of biofeedback to help people recover from spinal cord injuries– they literally take people with no movement and increase their mobility by isolating any brainwaves that reach the muscle and retrain people how to use it. Sadly, the clinician told me that they see a lot of cases in which surgeons have paralyzed their patients and mine was not a unique case.

So that’s the latest and greatest. I’ve been fortunate to have some out of town friends stay with me and it’s been wonderful to have the company.

xo

Tonya