Hi, everybody. Boy, am I tired! Last Friday was the end of my first full week of doing the Vivistim Rehabilitation Protocol (VRP). In the beginning, the schedule is 3 days of outpatient rehab for 1 1/2 hours 3 days per week, where the OT gives you very fundamental exercises to do, like pinching a piece of paper and trying to pull it out of the pinch; it sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, try doing it 20 to 30 times without a break, and you’ll find it’s more difficult than it appears. Building strength in a spastic hand is a very slow, meticulous job! Sometimes, depending on what shape your hand is in, you’ll have to do this one finger at a time, and each finger should have its reps increased periodically; the more reps you do, the better chance for a positive outcome! Another exercise I have to do is to pull the zipper on my vest up and down again for a set number of pulls. But, I think you get the idea. in the beginning, it’s all fundamentals. By the way, when doing these fundamental exercises, the OT is triggering the Vivistim at critical points in the motion to give the Vagas nerve a little current to stimulate the nerve to heighten the neurons’ ability to develop new pathways for the exercise to enhance the ability to rewire the brain to bring back the functionality lost by having a TBI.
Then, when the rehab session is over on the outpatient days, you have to go home and do eight swipes of the Vivistim device with a magnet to activate it, and it will stay activated for thirty minutes. while the unit is activated, you are to do 30 minutes of exercise while the unit will pulsate periodically to enhance the effectiveness of the exercise being performed. By the way, all this totals five and a half hours a day on outpatient days and four hours a day the rest of the week. To me, this means I have to ask myself, ” How bad do you want that hand back?” The word “quit” is not in my vocabulary for this task, so I say, “Bring it on!”
I’m thinking that once I get into more functional exercises, like using scales on the guitar to strengthen my fingers as a rehab exercise, the work will become more and more pleasant and meaningful. So, putting all those hours in will be more than worth it!
Stay tuned for Post 2 of the journey to see how I’m doing in week two. So don’t forget to subscribe!
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