Let's see... it's been a while since I last did this. I used to come home from OT each day and blabber on about how the session went on SPD Adult SHARE, our old Yahoo group. Well, up until recently this year, I haven't had much to report. I went in to see my OT 2 weeks ago and found out I hadn't been there in 5 months!
So, the first week back was relatively intense; we just did bodywork/Cranial Sacral Therapy for a half hour, on top of doing a quick run through on the Interactive Metronome (IM) and a little swinging. (BTW, my scores on the IM haven't changed at all! I'm still just as good at it as, or better than, I was when I last tried it.) Anyhow, after that, I got home and had a pretty rough weekend. I got kind of sick with some GI issues, and had to resolve them over the case of the past couple weeks. This is common when getting back into therapy, having a rough time, because my body was literally cleaning out a lot of the junk it had picked up since I was last in there, lol. Sorry if that was TMI for anyone
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This week however, as I am now going once every other week, we did something amazing. My OT had just been taught how to do Reflex Integration work (she's been in biz for decades, but is always learning new stuff), so she decided to give it a go with me.
She started by trying to lift me up by my arms while I was laying down. As soon as she started pulling up on my arms, I remember asking myself, "Am I supposed to get up? Does she want me to get up?" I seriously had to think about it! Right away I knew that meant that my brain wasn't processing this correctly, that I was supposed to just know to get up naturally.
She made the very correct guess that my shoulders hadn't moved *at all*. My arms would go up with her force, but my shoulders would just lay there, as though they had no clue my arms were even being moved. So, she went through a sequence of integrative exercises that had me moving my elbows, resisting her pull on my hands in different directions, and mimmicking some of her hand movements (which are always tough for me; my brain always get confused and messes up).
Well, after going through a couple rotations of these, my shoulders still weren't responding. She then had me wrap a theraband band around my arms, to use that as the resistance, and put rubber bands around my wrists (neurological feedback must be there), and had me hold onto a wooden rod that she would move around on my like before, wanting me to resist it lightly.
Well, after a few repetitions and some confusing hand gestures, we accomplished a couple things:
1) I was able to correct a postural abnormality in my left hand. If I had my fingers out, like in a 'growl/claw stance', my palm wasn't cupping like it should, but was forming a wide flat plain instead. After these exercises, I was able to get my left hand to cup! My right hand is still behind, but as I am right handed, it has been used more and the old position is pretty well learned by now. That will take time to correct.
2) Most incredible: I was able to pull myself up with my shoulders for the first time in my life!
At the very end of all those rounds of exercises, she grabbed my hands and pulled them up. I actually felt myself clutching her and was straining in places I haven't felt before, pulling myself up to her. By the end, I was sitting up, holding her hands still. She asked me if it was hard. A part of me wanted to say "Of course not, I've gotten up so many times in my life on my own," but then I realized, as I could feel my shoulders burning from wear and what I can only guess was the beginning of atrophy, that I was *really* worn out already. "Yes, it was," I admitted.
She laid me back down and then tried it again, and I got back up with her again. She continued to talk to me, but my mind was not on what she was saying, lol. I just couldn't believe I had done that, that those exercises she gave me had gotten that response. I wanted to cry all over her. It felt almost like someone learning to walk for the first time, as I have experienced a few times already in OT.
For those who don't know, I have very severe postural disorder, as part of my SPD. This comes with incredibly low muscle tone. As a baby, it was one of the first symptoms my mom noticed, that I wouldn't sit up on my own power if someone gave me a hand. I would just flop back down, unable to do it and exhausted, beaten by what should be a mundane task that everyone does. For me though, for whatever reason, my brain just never got that connection, until yesterday afternoon. One of my oldest noticed symptoms, treated. Not totally out of the woods, but responding for the first time!
Since this was the end of the appointment, my OT called my mom into the room (she comes because I don't feel comfortable driving myself home from these appointments, since I'm often worn out). She lifted me up one more time with my mom watching. It felt a little embarrassing, since I really felt like I was doing something that everyone my age should have been doing all along, but I wasn't going to let that cultural influence wreck the moment.
When I got home yesterday, I did cry. I just had to. And I made sure to personally thank my OT. This was just something, one of thousands of things, that had been out of reach for me before, just a pipe dream. Sure, it may not seem like much, but to me, it's just one more sign of how things will continue to improve for me.
This is yet another testament to the legitimacy of SPD as a diagnosis, and the reality that Occupational Therapy is, after all, the official form of treatment. Yesterday was just another in a long series of incredible event that have surrounded me since I first discovered SPD in January 2008. Thanks for reading
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. Hope that helps you.