Walking U progress and what I want for Christmas

At his last physical therapy appointment, the therapist told Patrick something that seemed like it surprised him.  He essentially told Patrick that if he wants to walk, he needs to increase his effort by three times the amount of effort by the next therapy appointment.  He told Patrick that he needs to be doing as many of the daily activities at home as he can with the walker instead of the wheelchair.

It reminded me of what my brother Reed said about meeting his new wife Deborah.  Sometimes in life you need to change your seat.  For Reed, it was a figurative seat change, but for Patrick, it will be a literal one.

It is the shifting of a wheelchair mindset to a walker one.  

I have to confess that when we were first married, I felt like I did a much better job at this.  We would almost always take the Geo metro when we were out and about and so we usually had just the walker.  Because it is so much easier (and faster) to take the van and the wheelchair, I have been guilty of not presenting the opportunity to use the walker as much as we should.

But just watching the therapist ending each session by having Patrick push his wheelchair for a bit is giving me some new ideas.  Even if we don't always have or take the walker, there is no reason that Patrick can't push the wheelchair (or grocery cart) for a few feet on each isle when we grocery shop.  I know it will be hard at first, but isn't every worthwhile thing difficult?

Patrick seems a little bit discouraged by the advice the therapist gave him but I actually see it as a wonderful sign. Because of Patrick's hard work over the past few months, perhaps it is easier to see him walking on his own someday as a possibility.

At our last appointment, the therapist had him working a bit on weight shifting, and eventually had him take a step or two on his own while weight shifting.  To give this proper perspective, Patrick didn't have anything in front of him and the only place the therapist was touching him was a light touch on the shoulder to help him feel more secure.  It brought tears to my eyes because for just a second, I got another little glimpse of how close Patrick is to meeting his goal.  Now we just need Patrick to catch the vision!

So please help me to encourage him in his goal to walk.  When you talk to him, text him, or see him, ask him what he has been doing lately to increase his walking efforts by three times.  Help him think of outside of the box (especially fun) ways to practice walking and strengthen his muscles.

To those who are wondering what to get us for Christmas, I would love nothing more than a box full of ideas on ways to get Patrick to do a little bit more walking each day or activities that help encourage us to change our seat in relation to his walking.

Walking University

First of all, thanks to all of the family members who pitched in and joined us on the Family Fitness Challenge.  It was a great way to kick-start Patrick's walking progress and really helped to motivate him. 

Things have kind of fizzled out with that though, and he is wanting to get himself going again.  After discussing our family goals for the year and the progress we each have made, we decided that maybe Pat needs a more formalized plan. 

We decided to create our own walking plan called Walking University and style it after one of my online classes.  The first thing that we did was to pick a reward and set a time-frame for how long the project is going to run.  We decided that because we are a family that strives for excellence, the best reward would come from getting an A+. 

1.     An A+ is 97-100% and is worth $100. 
2.     An A is 93-96% and is worth $50.00. 
3.     An A- is 90-92% and is worth $30.00. 
4.     A B is 80%-89% and is worth $20.00. 
5.     C and below will not receive any reward. 

Rather than randomly assigning a grade to each day (tried this in the past and it just doesn't work), the grades are based on a points system. 

-        Plan for Success – 25 points

-        Daily homework – 5 points each with a total of 30 points per week

-        Weekly walking projects – 50 points each

-        Therapy visits – 50 points each

-        Mid-term tests (visits with the specialist who runs time-trial measurements) – 100 points each

-        Final essay exam – 300 points each

The plan for success is just Patrick's plan for how he will accomplish his goals, his opportunity to select the homework assignments he wants to work on for this quarter, and a chance to make a list of potential weekly walking projects he will work on.  The one he is working on this week is getting a glass out of the cupboard, filling it with water and carrying it to the table, all while just using his walker.


The final exam essay is made up of 5 questions that Patrick already knows about that he needs to either write a response to or create a video.  These are questions like what did you accomplish, what will you do differently in the next quarter, what did you learn about goal setting and things like that.  I am hoping that he does a video response so that I can post it here for him to be able to refer back to.


We created a rubric to help him know how to grade himself on his daily homework and he is required to report in each day in order to get the points.  Not because he needs someone to keep tabs on him, but because there is a huge benefit to having an accountability partner.


Here is an example from his rubric, based on the 5 daily homework activities he selected.

	5 points	4 points	3 points	2 points	1 point
Ready with orthotics on, stretching done	Ready by 8 am	Ready by 9 am	Ready by 10 am	Ready by noon	Ready by	afternoon

Squats for at least 25 minutes with proper form

Proper form and more than 25 minutes of squats

Proper form  and 15-25 minutes of squats

Improper form and 15-25 minutes of squats

Proper form and 1-14 minutes of squats

Improper form and 1-14 minutes of squats

So far things have been going well and we are almost halfway through the quarter.  We'll keep you posted as things progress.