I’ve been walking a lot more in preparation for some bigger trips coming up. I do several miles on the beach in hard or soft sand and add in some sets of stairs on days that I feel I could use more. My PT has added and increased the difficulty of my physical therapy program and exercises. I tried to go dancing out one night and got “stuck” so told my PT the story and we’re now working on my “drop it like it’s hot” muscles! The video below is the discussion her and I had about it….pretty funny (sorry it’s sideways)! When I was bedridden after my neck surgery and my first hip surgery, I made two big goals. One was an international trip and the other would be to have a dance party. Well, the trip is planned and I leave in a couple weeks, but the dance party timing will depend on my range of motion abilities and my muscular strength. We are shooting for sometime in September to give my body time to get ready!

I also have had a couple of appointments with a new neurologist as well as a brain MRI. She wanted to check everything since the headaches I get are only since surgery and technically new. Thankfully, the brain MRI was normal! I can’t express how scary and nerve wrecking it is to have a scan of your brain. I knew everything would be ok, yet it was still stressful. She added magnesium to my supplement list because of the muscular cramps I get that are caused from the spinal cord. Within one week of adding magnesium 3x/day, the cramps lessened in frequency. It was amazing! I still get them, but it is much more manageable as long as I am regularly taking the mag. She also has a new plan of care as far as my migraines/cervicogenic headaches go. I am on board, except I do not want to take new medication for them and am ok to just use the breakthrough med that I have when I get the symptoms. We discussed the use of botox too, but we are going to wait and see how I do with the higher activity level and continuing to manage them the way I have been. As with everything else in recovery, time will tell.