End Of OHIP Funded Physiotherapy

Today was the final day of my 16 weeks of OHIP (Ontario Hospital Insurance Program) funded physiotherapy.

Took the walker around the hospital hallways for an extended walk. Seemed a bit more sluggish since one week ago. Stride not as long or as smooth. May be that the nerves have regenerated and another course of BoTox is warranted. Due to be assessed in early September.

Now its up to me to keep up the exercises and walking schedule and/or find a private physiotherapist in the community who might take over and suggest other exercises, procedures, therapies, or whatever, that might help advance my recovery.

Starting back to work in September - will certainly cut down on available time.

***As an afterthought, I finished my physio routine as below

• arrive and stretch out at parallel bars to loosen muscles, tendons and joints which seem to contract overnight much more than pre-injury. Walk up and down a number of times.
• walk with the walker in a longer hallway outside of physio. About 60 meters up & down each rep. Do two to three reps usually, as time allows, but now near the end of my sessions the walk was taken right out of the department taking various twists and turns while on different floor surfaces (terrazzo, carpet, tile etc.)
• return to physio to do various bench exercises currently focusing on the body core and it's contribution to stability and walking. On all fours raising one arm straight out then alternating with the other. On all fours again but now kicking one leg straight out the back, then alternating with the other. On my back pressing a rubber ball with my right hand into my left thigh, then reversing sides, left hand into right thigh - strengthens obliques. With large diameter ball (~1.5') under my heels, I pull my heels in and roll the ball towards me then out again, repeating. Then with the same ball under the back side of my knees, I bridge, lifting my back up off the mat with just my shoulders touching. A final exercise is seated, then lifting a weighted ball (~3/4' dia) from my lower right side slowly in an arc up to my upper left side, while twisting but keeping my back straight. Then reverse.

All exercises are done in 3 sets of 10 repetitions.

A final exercise is done on the NKO (?) bench which is simply a seated bench where each leg can lift weights up in a gentle kicking motion (quads) or adjusted to fight the weights when pulling back (hamstrings) - again 3 reps of 10 though I continue on until my therapist finds time to take me off. If any time remains (about 1 hour & 30 minutes at this point), I return to the parallel bars.

So those are the excercises I perfomed on my last weeks of therapy.