Crackberry

My cell phone was due for an upgrade at work (just in time too... I was getting a little frustrated with my Palm Treo).

I now have a Blackberry 8830.

I love it. The whole e-mail and messaging experience is just much better and slicker than the Treo. In a few minutes of set up and configuration, I was able to get all of my work e-mails forwarded to my Blackberry. This really makes it convenient to stay up on things when I am away from the office or in the evenings.

The device was pretty easy to figure out. After playing around for about 10 minutes and getting a quick five minute run-down from one of my co-workers, I had pretty decent command of the phone.

It's no iPhone, but it certainly is a much nicer device than my old Treo.

Done with PT!

Today was my last day of physical therapy. My last goal was to get to a normal range of up and down movement in my ankle (dorsiflexion and plantarflexion). My goal was to get over 40 degrees of movement. I blew that out of the water today with movement in the low 50's.

All that said, I am still not 100 percent yet (I would classify myself near 95%). I still have a little bit of problems controlling my foot drop when walking down the stairs, and I still cannot do a one-footed tip-toe on my bad ankle.

However, I have no limp in my walk. And everything is feeling pretty good. The other stuff will come back after lots more practice and exercise.

Next up - hardware removal. I am scheduled to get my hardware removed in about 3-4 weeks.

Balance and Leg Strength Conditioning

I have about 2 more weeks of physical therapy left.

The goals of the next 2 weeks involve the improving following two areas:

1. Balance (my balance stinks)
2. Leg strength (my legs feel like jello after walking up a flight of steps)

To that end, we have been tweaking my exercises as follows:

1. I do a higher level of resistance on the bike (level 8)
2. I do a 3 second hold on my wall squats.
3. I now do my BAPS board by standing up on it (this is ridiculously hard for me)
4. I now do sets of 15 leg presses (three sets with one foot, three sets with both feet)
   
5. I have to play catch with a heavy ball by bouncing it on a trampoline-like contraption. I do this while balancing on one foot.
   
6. I now do a higher level of resistance bands for my side-step exercises and ankle exercises.

Hardware comes out on November 18th. I'm excited to have it out!