For the first time in 3 years today I put my trousers on standing up 
Milestone !
Such a simple everyday occurrence when you haven’t had a stroke. My milestone marks a lot of factors that I have been working on for a long time that came together to enable this simple act in a way that is quite different to something I paid no attention to for 60 years.
Inchpebbles
The factors that combine were predominantly two:
- sufficient balance to stand on my weak leg and adjust posture in real time without collapsing to the floor,
- sufficient grip in my right hand to hold the waistband equally on left and right to enable lifting my legs into the opening .
Looking at the hand in more detail.
For a long time the act of reaching down to grasp something has been impossible because by the time my wrist is bent back - which doesn’t happen very well - My fingers are curled into the palm of my hand. So that has improved. Then when pinching my fingers together with the thumb to grasp something the grip has not been strong enough and fades too quickly to actually lift the trousers off the ground so that’s improved too .
They are building upon the fact that my shoulder and elbow are now mobile Which were last years milestones and have been capabilities I’ve been using and extending the utility of all year
Standing
For about a year I have been able to stand to put my trousers on if I stand with my weak side against the bed for support & because that side I fall onto. So I have been standing and deliberately engineering the fall to be onto the bed. But recently, culminating in today’s achievement, I was freestanding .
Beginning
I don’t accomplish this act with the grace, dexterity, speed with which I accomplished a thoroughly unremarkable & routine act of daily living for decades. The remarkable achievement of today is slow and clumsy
But it was a milestone today.
It marks another Reward for effort everyday.
There are many more inch pebbles and milestones to come.
I don’t know that I will be able to achieve the same as well tomorrow or the next day but I do know I’ll be better at doing it next month and the month after.
I have found that by constantly observing how my good side works and then consciously copying that towards my achievement of things with my once dominant side improvements happen.
Just recently I have relearned the compound movement that is pulling a door-to behind you whilst walking through - with my right hand. A surprisingly sophisticated combination of shoulder elbow wrist and finger activity that for a 18mths I was nowhere near able then for 18m I haven’t been getting right but within the last 3 to 5 days has shown a marked improvement.
Incremental
I realised that in the last few days that the piece of the jigsaw I was missing was the final movement of a wrist twist. Now I know it’s missing I’ve been practising it and I’m getting better - all very necessary with this cold weather and the drafty old farmhouse we live in
Unappetizing exercises
I have long struggled with exercises of the sort characterised by a box of pegs and a plastic cup or a pile of small wooden blocks. I did do many hours of that early on but found it unrewarding, even depressing trying to reconcile not following a regime that others told me was vital but yet I couldn’t adjust motivationally to embracing. I have however been continuously inventive in using everyday activity and focusing on consciously fighting learnt non-use: but again with less than rigorous elimination - giving a rise to feelings of guilt & self blame
Learned not use still dogs my use of cutlery.
I can eat a bowl of cereal with a spoon in my right hand - have been able to for a year. I can’t use a knife and fork normally. But with more putting on trousers, closing doors, always reaching for light switches and door handles I anticipate that a table knife in my right hand is no longer beyond the horizon but is now the horizon .
I’m sure your exercise regimes are different but maybe they will have similarities to mine and or maybe mine will give you ideas for yours
I always welcome reading about what others are using in their regimes and the milestones that you both set and achieve. Those milestones aren’t at the end of the journey, they’re the way markers as we progress together
Ciao
Simon
I use lampposts and other landmarks to alter arm positions pointing down, forward or across my waist.
