I walked

Yesterday at physical therapy I stood up out of my wheelchair for the first time since the accident. I stretched my hands high above my head, looked up at the ceiling and gave a bellow of joy. It felt so good to be standing straight up, arching my back and flexing all my muscles.

Next I began gently swaying back and forth weighting each foot,  and then I began to shuffle gently and carefully sideways keeping balance with my hands on the edge of a table. After one circuit of sideways shuffling I turned and began walking straightforward with one hand for balance.  No pain. Okay well maybe just a little.

When I arrived at physical therapy yesterday morning I didn't really know what to expect. I had received a prescription from the foot surgeons to begin load bearing and it said something about load-bearing "to tolerance" and I wasn't exactly sure what that meant.  I thought maybe we would just apply gentle pressure initially while remaining seated in the wheelchair. Turns out "to tolerance" means "go for it!"

Achieving this milestone was totally unanticipated, as I wasn't expecting to start load bearing for another two months and I figured that I wouldn't be standing for another two months after that.  I'm completely off the map as far as where I'm going and what's next---which is not a bad thing and I'm not complaining---but I am just a little discombobulated is all in a very good sort of way.