Me, trussed up like a turkey, being electrocuted.

The ‘good’ news is that I’ve drawn the ‘lucky’ ticket and am in the ‘best’ group of the 3 types of ‘treatment’ in this experiment.

That means that I’ll be in the group of 6 people that get to be hung up in the hoist with their feet on the ground, so that weight is bearing down on their feet. At the same time, electrical pulses will be applied so that my leg muscles tense up ‘to hold my weight’.
I must emphasise that I won’t feel a thing, but my legs will, independently of connecting with my brain… what’s left of it.

I’ll get 60 sessions of this over 12 weeks, plus get other physio to try to engage dormant muscles that I currently have no power over.

The expectation is that my legs will gain bulk, and that I’ll be ‘healthier’ at the end than I am at the start.

Which is good!

Otherwise here things are slowly getting better, in that I have a bit of a routine, with going to the gym, working fairly hard in there, not fearing the push to the hospital ( and getting faster and stronger at that bit, for sure ).

I’m going out tonight ( drinks ) and tomorrow too, to a pretty exclusive cocktail party ( get me – when they know what I’m like, I don’t suppose I’ll get an invite next month ) but I’m honoured to be invited this time.

Dani and the girls arrive on Friday night- 48 hours and counting – for 10 days of lovely company for me.

There is definitely a regular blip that occurs whenever things seem to improve for me, but as this post is upbeat I won’t dwell on that.

Thanks to everybody that contacts me.
FaceTime is now the preferred method of choice – it is better to see who you’re ‘talking’ to!

Okay, now I’ve gotta stay awake til i go out in 3 hours time, but falling asleep whilst in my Stand Up Chair is quite unlikely.

.. To my new American friends for having me along with them on Friday.

That’s Mac, Mike, Ken, Ben and Joey.

Isn’t that the cast of ‘Friends’ ?

For the company and the help and to Mike for the rides ( lifts in English ).

Well I was looking forward to waking up – until I did, having pissed the bed.

For the first time in quite a while, and despite not having a full bladder.
So it makes no sense at all.

One step forward, 2 back.

Today the sun came out in Louisville.
It was 15 degrees above and it was warm – properly warm.

I watched the two 6 Nations games on my iPad, talked to my wife and daughters on FaceTime, wished my mum a happy birthday, and then went out.

It’s the first proper time that I’ve done that – as in gone out, alone, without a destination, just for a look around.

I wheeled along the ‘sidewalk’, through roadworks along the road edge ( ok, a bit risky – but they had dug up the pavement ) for quite a while.

I eventually found a coffee shop which had tables outside, got a passer by to help me through the door, ordered a coffee and a cake ( and a fruit salad ) went back out, sat in the sun for 2 hours and read a paper.
It’s the first time I’ve read a paper in 19 months and been able to concentrate on what I’m reading. Before today, I’ve read the words and when ive reached the end of the article had little or no idea what it was I’d read, my head filled with other, less pleasant thoughts.
Today was different. I had to read and re read the lines, but then found they were sinking in. I felt optimistic and positive for the first time possibly since my accident that I’d be ok, that all was not lost, that I wouldn’t have to pretend for ever.

Tomorrow is another day, the forecast is for the cold to come back, but I find myself looking forward to waking up.

So I had my VO2 max endurance test just now.
They get you on an arm powered ‘bike’ with full gas mask and tubes on, yet more electrodes stuck to my chest.

You ‘arm pedal’ and every 2 mins they increase the resistance until you can’t take any more.
Knowing my lungs post injury are rubbish, I prepared myself for failure.

The test has a maximum time of 16 minutes ie with 7 increases in resistance.
No one had finished it. I did ask, that being my first question.
One guy had got to 14 minutes.

I had a scale of effort to nod to, being unable to speak thro the mask.
It went from 6 to 20, six being easy and 20 near death.

It got progressively harder , obviously.

At ten, guaging the increases, I thought that 16 minutes would be possible so I dug in , thinking of the very many times pre injury that I was tired beyond belief but kept going.

I am now the new record holder, having finished the test.

Did it make me feel good about myself?

No, that’s a much bigger challenge.

The suicide stats for spinally cord injured people are 8 times higher than in the General population.
That may be a US statistic but I imagine it’s similar elsewhere.

The most common method is gun shot.
The readily available gun in a huge number of American homes makes it easier to select this as the way out.
After all, climbing up a high building/ bridge/cliff whilst sitting in a wheelchair isn’t really an option.

My daughter, Lily, had awful news this week. Her rowing coach went missing on Tuesday night, whilst on the river near Putney.
His upturned boat was found, but he is missing and presumed dead.
As someone that spent so very many hours on the same river, I feel closer to this tragedy than many would.
Although I didn’t know Michael Hill, I feel so very upset by his loss.

My partner Sel had his brain tumour removed last Tuesday.
Today he heard that the op was not a complete success in that it has not rid him of the tumour, and he will need radiotherapy next.
My heart goes out to him, and to all those that love him dearly.

Today I spoke to the father of a young guy that I saw in the gym, his paralysed legs strapped to an FES bike.
Like so many here, he’d injured himself diving into water.
I asked how long it had been.

June 13th was the reply. Chillingly the same date as my own catastrophe.

I’ve taken the advice of several people and ventured out of my hotel, all by myself.

I head for Wild Eggs. It takes me a while to get there.
When I do it’s closed.
As it is every day after 2.30, the sign says.

I turn around and head back, then pass Jimmy John’s sandwich place.
It’s empty.
They open the door for me and in I go and order a coffee at the counter.

They don’t do coffee.
Or any hot drinks.

Do you have wifi I ask.

No.

So, as I’m here I buy a small bottle of water, then look up at the menu, above me.
Under ‘sides’ it has chips.

As I feel a bit silly just here drinking water, I order and pay for some chips.
I ask how long they take.
He looks at me oddly.

They’re just there, he says, pointing at bags of crisps.

I decide not to clarify my error and just take the crisps over to the corner table, where I am now eating them, with my water.

Crazy fast times in America.

Today at 9 am ( I was awake yet again, tired, at 5 ) they lay me down and put a full spaceman helmet on my head, with plastic sheeting attached to it that covered my shoulders, effectively sealing all my breath in, and the room air out.

Then Professor Daniela ( quite cute ) told me not to move ( at all ) for about 45 minutes, and just to breathe.
Imagine my dismay when she said on no account could I fall asleep ( given the above ).
I just about managed it, though I struggled numerous times to stay conscious.

I’d been instructed not to eat anything today, before the test, and to only drink water, if anything.

She recorded the amount of carbon dioxide exhaled by me, and in doing so established that the amount of calories I need to consume daily, on the basis that I do absolutely nothing, without losing or gaining weight, is 1600kcal.
Obviously if I do anything physical at all, then the calories I need to consume increase accordingly.

I’ve never counted calories in my life, but do know that 1600 isn’t that much food, certainly compared to how much I ate pre injury.

It is just as well then that I have the post injury appetite of a mouse, really only eating out of logic, in that food is an obvious requirement for existence.

Finding myself in America, where 1600 kcal is the breakfast of the average 9 year old, they must find me quite a curiosity.

As I intend using the adapted gym 5 days a week, and will self push along in my chair, I will burn more calories than 1600, so may have to eat more than I have been.

Or drink more alcohol?

Well I did watch one 20 years ago in the Hogarth Club in Chiswick, but I was so pissed by the time it started, I may as well have not been there.

So.. Last night at the McCarthy’s – I saw the whole thing ( and sober ).
It lasts a few hours, the crowd goes crazy, the players are big mofu’s for sure, the food was plentiful, the company was lovely.

I can’t see the game catching on, outside America.
Not enough space, not enough free running.
They’ve got the right shaped ball but they need to make it a bit bigger, lose the helmets and pads, and get 15 players on each side.

Then it might start to get exciting.

6 Nations starts on Friday, and John’s found me a friend and found an Irish bar that’s showing Wales vs England.

Now that’ll be more like it!