Still dealing with losing feeling in my hands overnight but trying to work through it. A slight shift here. A slight shift there. Whatever we can do to try adjusting the pillow or my arms throughout the night.

Upon waking up I’m having an immediate claustrophobic feeling. My initial thought since coming home is that it has to do with how limited my head is in its movements to avoid feeling the tightness across my scar. 

This is something that I am doing purposefully to myself but still causing a weird claustrophobia. Therefore I’m finding myself popping straight up in the morning this week instead of laying there.

After a fairly normal morning, I went for a walk with my mother-in-law and Sasha. Not only does this help get me out of the house, it also helps improve my balance and gait. 

Since the brain surgery, balance and gait have been two areas that I have been working retraining my brain on. Walking upstairs seems to be the hardest for me. Therefore I have been trying to focus on taking one step at a time, similar to what I had to do after shoulder surgery. 

Following shoulder surgery, it only stuck around for a day or two though. Granted, we’re only in the third day of me being home since the brain surgery but it feels different this time.

Once Laura came home for lunch, like yesterday, I started to get really tired. I allowed myself to nap throughout the afternoon. I wasn’t able to fall asleep for that long, maybe a couple hours in total. But, even a couple of hours can be beneficial to the healing process so I’m ok with that.

I ended up sleeping until my first physical therapy appointment post-brain surgery. I knew this would be harder than previous sessions. It had been over a week since I had gone and it was post-surgery.

My shoulders were considerably tighter, taking longer to stretch out and gain range of motion. That was a painful process to work through. It was actually probably the tightest that I have been since starting physical therapy a few weeks ago.

Beyond stretching my shoulders out, we worked through a number of stretches that could be done before bed to reduce the pressure on my nerve pathways that is causing the loss of feeling in my hand(s). 

I’m looking forward to testing those out tonight along with using my polar ice packs for a few minutes afterward.

We were able to use Munchery again tonight. It’s a service that uses local chefs to create daily menus. You select the meal that you want, just like at a restaurant, and they deliver it to your home with heating instructions.

It’s interesting trying a number of these various food delivery services. We also have redemption codes for Good Eggs (think: farmer’s market home delivery) and WaitersOnWheels (think: food delivery from local restaurants). We’re looking forward to testing both over the next few weeks.

As the night sets in we are relaxing on the couch watching The Amazing Spider-Man. The past two nights I have enjoyed staying up instead of heading to bed after taking my 8:15p pain medications the past two nights.