Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Physio for Sensation








I am having a difficult time formatting my blogs and getting them posted. I guess I want to be more creative than the "blog" will allow me. Frustrating and I don't know Html to fix the problems I create. Therefore you are receiving posts now not how I purposely have designed them and with some grammatical errors. I get stuck and post it in a panic and then am locked out of trying to correct my errors. Since time is of the essence .... this is what you get for now. I am approaching this as something is better than nothing.
Monica has been hard at work noticing different sensations around her. She has to pay attention to what sense she is using and think about what she remembered that sensation used to be like. She is doing this in her everyday life here, but during her physio they have about ten different items they are using to try and trigger a feeling.

For instance, she holds a hot water bottle that she puts on her face, legs, arms, under her feet, on her hands, etc. and needs to concentrate on that specific area and tell herself it is hot and then try to find in her body any sensation that gives her that feeling. After she does that item she moves on to a brush and repeats all the places with concentration, then she uses something rough like the top of kitchen sponge, sharp item (she is poking her hand in the picture), cold pack (which is the blue item in the picture on her forehead), cotton ball, etc. The doctor or physio person may touch the sole of her foot, she looks at it, then looks away and tries to feel it. So far there has not been any results, but we are looking at the situation like a stroke victim and working repetitively to try and reteach the brain what sensation feels like.

Sensation for you is different than sensation for me. I do not know if the same piece of cotton material feels the same to you, like it does for me. Therefore, we want her to recreate her own "vocabulary" of sensation. Another example would be using your vision to see colors. Some people see the world black and white and cannot detect color. We do not know exactly what color red your eyes see versus what color my eyes see. To relearn colors, I would then note that that shade of color represents red and work on learning green as a new color noticing any changes. I would create a new vocabulary for color based on the different shades a color may have even though I cannot actually see the color. When Monica eats something I am trying to teach her to think about why she is eating it and does she have any sensation in her body indicating she is hungry or full. She eats a lot because she is bored. Why - I do not know the answer nor does she. She can be busy on the computer but want to eat. Before she eats she needs to recognize that she is either bored or does she really need to eat. (I always let her eat because I think her body in some way is saying it needs fuel - sometimes I have attitude because she just ate a huge dinner and it has only been one hour, but I have to believe her body knows best.) By doing these exercises we hope to trigger something, somewhere in Monica to start to begin learning sensation.

Monica just had another procedure and is resting right now. We obvisoulsy are hoping for any, any type of sensation and will let you know once it happens.

Wishing with all my heart ...

1 comment:

  1. i am Aliyah. i'm coming monday night with jaime. look forward to meeting you all!

    ReplyDelete