"Interpersonal Systemic Shame makes it easy to see people's laziness, sloppiness, or apathy as the source of the problem rather than a consequence of repeated structural failures. Interpersonal Systemic Shame often involves blaming and shaming people who share identities or experiences with us, because they reflect the qualities we've been conditioned to hate in ourselves."
- Unlearning Shame, Devon Price, PhD
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How do those of you with major physical disabilities exercise/keep active? My achilles is wrecked again, my entire left side, knee, foot, everything is flaring up. I'm pretty much accepting now that this isn't going to get better, and is actually getting worse over time. Even basic walking is often out of the question. But the lack of exercise makes the muscles, tendons etc weaker over time. Not to mention I've become incredibly unfit to the point I can get out of breath easily. The exercises the physio tells me to do are pretty much worthless. What should I do? Should I just give up and rot? What a life to look forward to. And a migraine today. happy 42nd birthday to me.
I've helped work out a bunch of mobility disabled people. The straightforward answer independent of the specific disability is that you do what you can and you very much have to be patient and willing to accept failure, much more so than anyone else. If you can only flex your leg a little bit, you only flex it that much, if you can't move that day, you don't move that day. But you do as much as you can when you can and to the extent you can. Your physio should be much more knowledgeable about the specific exercises, but in general what you need to do is just sit down and make a habit of the exercise and do a little every day, and sometimes doing a little better includes doing a little worse one day.
My physios are useless. Just give me the same exercises each time and usually then discharge me with no follow up.
I'm sorry your birthday is so bad on top of everything else. I wish you a happy birthday despite all of this, because you deserve to be happy
I hope someone with a physical disability can chime in and give you some better advice. While I'm not physically disabled, I did have some exercises I could do after my surgery when I couldn't sit at all or stand for longer periods of time. I think the trick is to look for the parts of your body that you can use and try to train them instead of trying to work around the parts that won't allow exercise at the moment. For example, as my lower body was pretty much useless from the surgery for about three months, I tried doing some yoga exercises that involved the neck and shoulders. It wasn't much, granted, but being able to consciously use the muscles in the shoulders, arms, and upper torso really helped to make me feel better.
Thank you.
I really need to be able to walk outside every day, otherwise I get really frustrated and can't sleep. Without that, life sucks worse than ever to the point of pointlessness. And my achilles is getting weaker over time no matter whether I do the physio exercises or not.
You're welcome
I know it's not advisable but can you move through some of the pain? I'm asking more out of curiosity, like, does your Achilles tendon grow so tight you can't move it when you try to walk, or is it excruciating pain but the movement still works?
It's currently walkable to a certain extent, I can get to and from the car, and walk around the house. It's also worsening, so I don't know how bad it's going to get again. It feels like it's being sliced with a razor blade and looks like the Chernobyl elephant's foot, but it's nowhere near as bad as it has been previously, yet.
This sounds to me like you could use a lot more warmth around your ankles and calves, and possibly even massages. I don't know how flexible you are with that much pain, but maybe you could try massaging your legs. It might relief some of the pain, though I know it won't get rid of the root cause. It's just a thought, but I hope it can help with the pain a bit
I am supposed to be massaging them, but to be honest I've kind of let that slide as it doesn't seem to be doing anything. I do rub a bit of ibuprofen gel into them when they're really bad. I'm supposed to ice them, heat isn't recommended.
Alright, if heat isn't recommended really don't try it. It's just the instinctual thing I figured might help, but I do hope the docs know better than I do. As to the massages, they usually need to be applied regularly and in the right way, and to be perfectly honest, I think some body parts you just can't massage properly on your own. But I would still suggest you give it another try. The idea really is to get the blood flow moving, make it easier for your body to heal where possible. Try do to whatever you can that makes you feel a little bit better at least. I believe in you
Thanks for the suggestion though. I should be icing and massaging it but I'm suffering from quite a bit of executive dysfunction at the moment. I'm having trouble doing everything. I want to get my CDs out of my bookcase and put them in an old CD rack that's lying around so I have space in the bookcase for all the books that are lying around. That would clean the place up a bit. Every day I think I'll do it tomorrow but I just can't start. It looks like a bomb has hit my room.