There are loads of horrible lessons to be learned from Disney princess movies, but I’m not going to touch that. I’m instead going to talk about the coordination that comes from familiarity with your appendages. When The Little Mermaid begins, Arial is adept at moving through the water by using her tail. She turns and twists with relative ease in the buoyant environment because she’s used to both the water and the fish tail. When she’s given the chance to walk with legs for the first time, she wobbles quite a bit. Her brain isn’t used to sending signals to legs to walk one foot in front of the other; her nerves are new.
My nerves are old and broken. My brain is still sending signals, but the nerves haven’t been getting the right messages – the reverse is true as well. In a normal land environment, there are certain factors that I encounter which my body accounts for – gravity being the biggest deal. In therapy sessions, my therapist will occasionally hook my legs up in straps while I lay down to practice motions without the hindrance of gravity. Another way to cheat gravity is in water. Those who’ve followed my story since REHAB will possibly remember my one previous attempt at walking in water and how it was not so worth the great amount of effort necessary.
Well, two years later, I tried it again. Carol has been saying for months (almost years) that she’s convinced I’d love hanging out in a thermal bath to relax my muscles, and Hunter long ago offered to come with me to keep me safe in the water (you know, in case Carol tried to drown me). I was nervous about being in the water, but the biggest fear I had was the transfer from chair to pool. I remember the transfer with Alex back in REHAB, and it was scary to be wet and moving weight without my braces. I talked through all my fears with Hunter, and he planned out how we could try this out as safely as possible.
Yesterday, Hunter and Michele showed up at my house to tape up my ankles in preparation for this grand new adventure. Michele’s job was to hold my feet in position as her husband wrapped the tape around to keep the foot secure, and we all joked about how without trying I kept pushing her back as my calf fought the proper angle of my ankle. Carol showed up after we started the second foot, and once my ankles were covered in medical tape and tucked into water socks, we loaded into the Barber’s car with my wheelchair and drove out to Bad Bellingen, a thermal bath about fifteen minutes away.
This particular bath has water wheelchairs, so Michele grabbed one for me and helped me change and transfer to the other chair. She kindly asked the front desk where we could securely check in my personal chair and was met with strange looks as they instructed her to leave it in the open entry area with the other water chairs. I often forget I live in a country where no one would dream of stealing a disabled person’s wheelchair; it’s really quite a gift. Ready to go, we made our way into the indoor pool where Carol and Hunter were already waiting. Hunter found an employee who could operate the crane to lower me into the pool, and he carefully and slowly helped me transfer from the pool chair to crane seat. Secure and holding on to a pool noodle, I took deep breaths as the employee swung me over the water and slowly lowered me down. Carol and Michele helped me out and pulled me to more shallow water where I tried to stand up. My feet were reticent to flatten out, but we spent about an hour trying different things to relax my muscles, stretch my calves, and flatten my feet. I had a couple exercises from my therapists that I tried out in the water, and my wonderful friends helped me with every new thing.
I was certainly grateful for all the help, and I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have gone with anyone else. Fear is an overstatement, but these three knew my anxieties about trying out this new thing that had been relatively unsuccessful before. My function is significantly different than the last time I was in a pool, but I also was trying this for the first time out of a hospital facility with certified therapists and nurses who do this regularly. I trust Hunter’s training to keep me safe in my unique situation, and I trust Michele and Carol to also help with whatever else I might need. The three of them together helped me try out some exercises from my therapists where I pretended to be the Little Mermaid – I focused very carefully on moving the very base of my spine with help from my stomach and lower back muscles just like Margot taught me, and I held myself steady with my core instead of my shoulders like Anja encouraged me to do. It’s not my normal environment, so the exercises took a lot of concentration and were far from feeling natural, but it was good practice.
With help, I felt safe, I laughed a lot, and I was even able to relax a little bit. It was still a new thing that required a lot of energy though, so I was completely exhausted by the time we decided to leave the pool. (Full disclosure: I decided it was time to leave; I’m pretty sure Carol could have stayed another two hours.) Changing out of the wet swimsuit was not so bad once I had my trusty braces back on, and my friends waited patiently as I took my time getting myself ready to leave. I was so tired, and we all expected that I’d sleep soundly through the night which was sadly not the case, but it was still an overall good experience. I’m pretty pooped today, but I’m proud of myself for trying out my fish tail moves, and I’m back to wobbling on land for a while.
