7/20
I had a wonderful time with my folks today, as we wrap things up after the bachelor and bachelorette party. It’s always nice to be able to spend time with them like we did on this lazy Sunday. It was a beautiful day, we were able to bring them around the neighborhood, down to Burnhearts, and sat out on the patio before they had to get ready to go. I always am bummed to see them leave!
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I’m so stinking tired! It’s 8:🥹🫡
(I’m looking at this from the next day, and turns out I was so exhausted, that’s all I was able to write out!) I was truly exhausted, I fell asleep with my phone in my hands, typing my notes out for the day! Turns out each day can sometimes be a bit of a doozy, and yesterday and the rest of the weekend sure was for me!
7/21
My legs are cold?? What?? Is this for real right now!?! This is insane!? I’m so fatigued, this has got to be what’s going on because my body right now is running on Empty!?
My body has woken up from this nap feeling pretty deleterious, I’m not going to lie. Yuck.
I need to kick. I need my legs to kick. I need them to ramp this up. At therapy today on the treadmill, Danica and I did a little variation on the treadmill. It was really cool to get my legs work in a different way the way we did! I honestly was really surprised by the fact the way she explained the mechanism for how the quads worked. I guess I didn’t really fully appreciate the fact that the quads work the hips in flexion while also getting the knee in extension, at various times spread out throughout the gait cycle?!
7/22
“This fatigue is not failure. It’s the cost of entry into the next version of me.”
Neurons shifting from less reliable, noisy firing to more reliable, bursty, and coordinated firing patterns, and especially in ways that reinforce memory maps is really interesting to see happen possibly inside myself during my rehabilitation! Learning that this behavioral change is what makes neurons plastic helps explain how they form new place fields and improve the signal-to-noise ratio, making the hippocampal spatial map more reliable. After experiences, these plastic hippocampal neurons also increase their burst firing during non-REM sleep—especially when they fire together with other neurons during sharp-wave ripples. So these more reliable, plastic neurons strengthen the hippocampal network overall! It’s really been interesting trying to tie all these concepts together as I learn after my accident, it’s really wild to see.
Downstream observer neurons, I need to make note of this because I would like to do some additional research into this topic!
Well, I’m not going to lie, today has been busy. I talked to a lot of people, completed a lot of work, got in the standing frame, and my body is ready for more. It turns out, in “The Brain” I’m listening to, the signal:noise ratio is a fun topic. This is interesting because I’ve thought about this in respect to my legs, and how I know when there is a change throughout the day in signal and noise. During movement, exercises, and physical activity, the signals are more clear. Sitting, stationary, or not moving, I notice how prevalent the noise is. It’s so weird. I’ve grown able to tolerate the “noise” and I’m feeling how I’m continuing to work on increasing the signals, and changing that ratio. I know I wouldn’t have been able to make this change without allowing my body the opportunity to feel. I had to stop taking all the nerve blocker, nerve pain, nerve related drugs, to allow the signals to actually go through. To be honest, I’d love for this trend to continue. I’ll have to keep working to see how this progresses!
I JUST HAD A SNEEZE THAT DIDNT HURT!!! It was long and slow, and it didn’t feel like I was going to crush my ribs!
I just realized what it is. “Making connections” whether I’m talking to people, working through a math problem, or working on my body, I’m just making new connections. I’m building off what I’ve learned, or what others have learned and am just compiling that information and building off what was previously laid down. All new breakthroughs and discoveries are really a compilation of a multitude of ideas and external references. That’s all I’m doing here right now with my body. Or even at work! I believe this is why Evan and I work so well together, because I can articulate a problem fairly well, and Evan is altogether better than most when it comes to solving math related issues. We work well together because of this, and truth be told I believe we all need these relationships in our lives. Anyways kinda interesting one to think about!
Also, I was able to contract my abs and actually do a wheelie for the first time with this new backrest! This was incredible!!
7/23
I really have needed to get caught up on sleep! My body sure needed all this rest! I honestly feel some big changes happening and coming down the pipeline, it’s really interesting to lay here as I wake up, and just scan my body for all these new sensations! My legs and entire lower body truly is filling in more and more with each passing day! I need to keep working on my kick, and getting my knees in extension! I need a lot of reps, but I know I can do it!
It was also interesting, I noticed last night that my hips weren’t being as awful and over reactive? This has to be a good sign that they are simmering out!!
So, I was up in the standing frame for 1:40 minutes. Only thing is my left leg gets so stinking sweaty. I get that folks will say that’s just a symptom of “autonomic dysreflexia” or something, but really I feel like it’s just an overactive sympathetic nervous system? Like, I feel fine. My body is okay. I need to help retrain my body to understand that being up standing doesn’t require my left leg to sweat. That’s what the sympathetic nervous system does, it’s the fight or flight response. But turns out, just getting up to stand? Uh uh, no way! That is not going to be the reason for my leg to get sweaty! He needs to chill out, and I think what I’m doing, by slowly increasing time in the standing frame, more standing, and more exercise, is slowly training my sympathetic nervous system to chill out!
This is so interesting, I really woke up my entire abdomen in this standing frame session!
Now, I’m curious what helps scar tissue? Is all scar tissue the same?
Holy smokes, my lower abdomen! My legs! My core! My hips! This was a great PT session! I had a great session on the floor, and my shoulders were really making some rather large movements! My scapula was really moving a lot! It was also cool trying to get my opposite leg and hip to stay planted while I was doing some single arm pull throughs. These were hard! Also made it back onto the treadmill, and boy were my legs really working to kick forward, and also plant myself on the ground to propel myself forward!
I got done with PT, and my lower abdomen was fired up! This has been an incredible day, moving around these legs so much! It really is an all day affair. I don’t get much time to break besides to eat! So weird, but what else am I going to do? I’m laying in bed finally, getting my legs stretched out. To be honest, I’ve never felt more tired in my life, as I have these days. I seriously get angry, even. Almost like how a toddler gets irritable and cranky? Yeah, that kind of tired. It’s so odd because I’ve never experienced this kind of tired before.
I honestly felt some of the most wild sensations in my lower left abdomen as I’m laying here in supine. It’s so weird? Something is waking up, and I’m not sure what it is? What part of me is becoming active again? I know how hard this is, but I know something is happening! So, I’ll take my time to think about this one, I know it’s something!
7/24
Wow! This has gotta be the most significant my feet have felt after waking up since the accident everything right now feels so much easier because I have so much more strength, and control except in my feet. This is absolutely wild! I figure all these things gotta be helping, it’s never Just one thing! The way my legs have been responding at PT and then also I think on those days from PT I need to make sure I get a lot of rest cause last night I was laying down at 8 o’clock. my body just needs a lot of rest. Let’s see how today goes!
Standing frame for 1hr 50min!
Pilates! Session went really well today! Each day getting my legs out further and further into extension! It’s always wild how exhausted I get when I’m done, too. It really works it out of me! I sometimes am not even sure as to why?
It’s like, as soon as you think you’re good at something, just that thought alone can lead you astray. There’s so much to learn about something, and even then, you never max it out. I guess this is a thought I’ve been realizing about almost everything, it’s honestly really interesting, how much our mindset can affect our learning process and information intake.
Have you ever had to think about what it would be like in your life, to not be there? Because, as someone who survived such a horrific accident, it’s honestly really weird to have to wake up, and realize that there is a world that I am living in, that I potentially could not exist in. It’s so weird. It makes everything in life seem so small. It’s a bit morbid, sometimes to have to have thoughts like this arise, but I let them come, think about them, and try my best to let them pass. I feel it’s only natural to get some fairly interesting thoughts like this throughout the day, I guess it’s just what we do about the thoughts, is what defines us.
7/25
What is pretty crazy is how much sleep I need these days, and especially lately! I think this step change in the amount of standing work I’m doing, increasing from an hour to 1:40-1:50 is really doing its toll on my sleep! I can feel in the morning when I think my legs have had enough sleep. Usually they are not tingly at all, the noise is quieted, and they feel much more active and ready to go! This morning, my left leg is definitely in extension way better, and my hip isn’t freaking out! Which is great! But my body is definitely feeling like he needs some more rest in the legs. Maybe let’s try to catch a few more Z’s?
So my quads and hamstrings work in 2 actions. Hip extension and knee flexion. They have to do up to two joints at once. Turns out, this isn’t typical of muscles in our bodies, and I was talking to Danica and Charlie about this one at PT! Interesting I hadn’t made this connection with my quads yet up to this point? I always thought that the quads acted solely on the knees! Wow was I wrong?!
So, I just learned that apparent retrograde motion occurs when a planet appears to travel backwards in the night sky. But also, this is when the planet is in between the sun and earth. Interesting how this happens, it almost makes me wonder if there is something happening to the gravitational field during this period, to somehow affect our brain’s chemistry, which then can affect our own spiritual connectivity? Huh, interesting thing to think about? I wonder what it all means or if people are looking into these relationships? I wonder who has? I still think that the relationship between neurology and quantum physics needs to be explored more. I would love to help bridge this gap one day! Seems like such an interesting area of study! For the planets relationships, I know folks have studied about this for centuries, I just am not as learned on my orbital mechanics!
We had a great visit with Bruce and Luis today! Boy, do these fellas sure love to help. Goodness, I’ve been hard pressed to find more caring individuals, honestly anywhere. It’s pretty amazing to have been able to cross paths with them! I’m honestly so honored with the outreach that Bruce has been up to! He is really trying, helping, and wanting me to get the exoskeleton! It really means a lot to me to know how many folks out there are actively helping me to accomplish this! It’s pretty amazing! I’m just Joe, I don’t know what I did to deserve all this help, but it sure means a lot! One day at a time, slowly but surely, I think I’m gaining on it! Bruce even said, “you can’t get to a ‘Yes’ without having to work through and be okay with getting some ‘No’s’, it’s just how it works!” and he’s right. I guess I haven’t really thought about it as plainly as he was laying it out, but he’s totally right! Let’s try to see if I can keep up the progress and outreach, and hopefully some caring folks will be receptive!!!
7/26
I had an amazing morning with Callie, slowly but surely my body is coming back online! What a time, goodness!
My legs right now up in the standing frame, with the compression vest on, are really waking up! It’s interesting too, because I’ve had quite a few toots, and it’s really helping wake up my entire abdominal region! My left side abdominal region too, has been slowing down and is much less reactive! I can feel how much more active my transverse abdominis is with all this as well! There’s so much to report on! These 1hr 45min + sessions in the standing frame have really been waking my legs up! It’s been pretty incredible! Right now too! This morning was really incredible as well, so today is what I was calling an ‘Active Recovery’ day. Movement, light exercises, rest, stretching, and hopefully a good nights rest!
Trying to put all of my rehab ideas together sometimes isn’t always so easy, there’s just so much to keep up with. But slowly and surely, my legs and body is making progress! Standing strength, core work, reciprocal motion. All of this helps with SCI’s. It’s just a fact I’ve seemed to realize and be working through with all this. My nutrition, mental state, energy levels, goodness you name it. I honestly feel like I have to be on my A game at what feels like all times?! Hard catching a break when it feels like I have so much on the line. I’ll try to wrap things up and get some rest, it’s been a long week! Let’s see how next week goes!
The Astronaut on Earth 
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