This week was extremely satisfying in physical therapy, but the trade-off to that appears to be a lot of soreness and fatigue. On Tuesday, I greatly surpassed my previous cane-walking distance record by toodling along for 100ft without resting, then following with another 75ft walk. I also continued working on my standing balance by standing for 3 minutes at a time doing bouncy ball exercises with the trampoline.
I used to always get lower back aches when standing for long periods at the copying machine or in the kitchen. "Long periods" in those days meant upwards of 30 minutes to an hour. These days though, it would seem that 3 minutes constitutes a long period, and after my two days of therapy for the week, I did enough standing to make my lower back ache terribly for the past two days. Enough to take hydrocodone for it.
Standing and taking enough steps to get to and from my commode is pretty challenging with this much lower back pain. I think it's pretty clear I over-exerted what my body was able to handle this week, but that also makes it pretty clear that I need to do more trunk strengthening exercises so that I can stand upright and use abdominal muscles to hold my trunk straight without straining my lower back. So, when my back has recovered enough to not need pain meds anymore, I'll be gently increasing my in-bed exercises that focus on abdominal, hip, and lower back muscles.
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