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logs

Andrew

No, not the mathematical kind….

These are of the wooden kind we all know and love and are produced with a saw. We have branches that have been lopped off and they are perfect for cutting up. The thing about a using a saw is that the action has to be in a straight line and in the same plane each time. I could do it before the stroke but no longer.

I hadn’t thought about it until over the weekend when we were putting in an arch in the garden. This was for climbers such as jasmine or honeysuckle, something that’s fragrant, a celebration of being retired now. But I kept missing with the mallet, even though, guess what, I was superb at that too before the stroke. So I saw off a couple of logs each day as a therapy. No doubt it also helps with the HIIT too.

Simon

I guess it’s because you’re a mathematician that you write "logs no not the powers to which the base is raised to equal the number.

I was primarily a computer specialist so when I read the title logs I thought the "recording of the history of events” 🙂 of course advocated by PTS and OT who think that our rehab is all about generating numbers of pegs pinned to a cup

I too have discovered that soaring and hammering is now a problems (sawing too - soaring was a speech to text error by my phone but also ironically relevant)

One solution I adopted to the use of a saw was to buy a small one-hand ed battery powered chainsaw 🙂 But I also use a rip and tenon left handed and I am beginning to try rite handed. Hammering I am better left than right and while we are away today and tomorrow when I get back on Thursday I have a very large whisky half barrel to repair Which will require a lot of banging and maybe screwing.

I’ve also discovered the felling axes, splitting aex and hand axe are all well beyond my current capabilities - I hope to restore the one day 🙂

I have a Jasmine that we planted 25 years ago and is extremely invasive of everything around it. Also have a wisteria which I would take some pictures of if I wasn’t in the car on the M8 instead of in the garden.
Fragrant clematis for this time of year is Elizabeth Montana - We have one splurge all along the back boundary walls - probably getting a bit old because it’s not at its peak which was 5 years ago. Honeysuckle I find spreads somewhat invasively too

Pictures to follow when we get home
Simon

Andrew

Re logs, oh yes, a mathematician’s play on words! Of course, I had forgotten the third popular meaning and its relevance to you.

Speech-to-text sounds like fun! I use it often with Zoom/Teams calls, not because I am hard of hearing but because it sometimes gets it wrong in humorous ways and folk occasionally gabble - a laugh a minute!

Interesting about the mini-saw. Our older son has sit-on grass cutter because his garden is large. Our’s is not so big but therapeutically bumpy. So I am opting for the therapeutic route! I was unable to do it last year.

All the best with the whisky barrel - mine’s a double!

Thanks for the info about the climbers. We haven’t got them yet, and so the final decision will be very important.

Andrew

Andrew One further thing…. PTs and OTs are very much into measuring stuff and recording progress. Understandable that they would, but it can be restrictive. The big problem lies in splitting therapies from real-life activities in general. The logs and the greenhouse frames and the cutting of the lawn represent where I am right now, and the doing of them is flaming challenging. They will make me better because they are challenging. So I sort-of welcome them - you know what I mean. So I do measure the measurable, I make mental notes too about how I have fared, I know that tomorrow may not be as good as yesterday was and I don’t worry, and I keep on going.

Simon

Andrew Understandable that they would, but it can be restrictive

Yes but NO! and it’s more than “can”
I guess firstly we should note that PT’s and OTs have a client base that is wider than the neurologically caused customer needs.
But then they should recognise that they have got a client base where customers are drawn by different causes and their service offering - which they provide in exchange for payments - should be aware of and attuned appropriately

That last bit I think is still in the future of these professions as a realisation. I have it within the scope of SIG to raise the awareness.

With the metrics that can be generated from increasingly Wi-Fi enabled rehab aids we have the opportunity to generate large data sets that can be analysed to identify the mechanical therapies that are useful to the stage and the personality being helped and with the analysis of our free text conversation it should be possible to fit that into life after stroke programs of therapeutic activity.

All of this is necessary when the PT or OT is treating a brain not treating MSK malfunctions or damage. The difference is so profound as to make one mindset when applied to the other cause 95% misdirected - imho.

This is dovetailing with my trajectory on CIMT. I cannot maintain motivation for what I see as nugatry exercise. The prescriptive interjection of a glove disables my ability to perform any everyday activity which is two-handed. CIMT with a glove is equivalent to misdirected MSK mindsets
Two-handed challenges which introduce the variety that drives neuroplasticity in a truly correctly aligned axis is what we need.
So I too use mowing the lawn, planting the pansies (antirhynms etc), and also the hammering soaring raking digging…
I used to record my achievements on the stroke association forum and the bastards deleted the whole fucking lot. So I have lost my log of achievements 🙁
Within the first year I built a pergola one-handed and installed it. Much to the amazement of Lea & others 🙂

Andrew know that tomorrow may not be as good as yesterday was and I don’t

Yes there must be a name for the tendency to see perturbations not the trend that underlies and it’s the trend that underlies that it is important to focus upon

Andrew

Sorry I disagree with your view on “but it can be restrictive” with regard to the measurement of repeated action to determine the progress. One has to be realistic over progress and we are in it for the long term, and it is the general trajectory that is important. Such progress has to be measured.

Ever since I started cycling to work - in my 30s - I have measured my journey time on the bike and recorded it. On average it got better year on year, account being taken for external temperature and head winds and so on. The occasional aberrant squirrel could be ignored! But we do the same with stroke - we measure every now and then just to see how things are going. The main aim is progress, but measurement every time becomes stressful. [As a mathematician I fitted a sine wave, a cosine wave, a constant and a straight line to my cycling journey time - poor sad individual. Least squares. I even set it as an exercise for the students. For a long time the gradient of the line was negative, meaning that I got faster year-on-year. Late Jan was my slowest time! Then I passed my mid-50s and begun to get a bit slower on average!]

I also disagree with the therapist’s detailed methods. Instead of the number of spoon twirls in a minute, for example, I measure the time taken for say 10 twirls. For me it is less stressful to go for a fixed number than for a fixed time.

Whatever else the PTs and OTs are involved with is of little consequence to my primary goal as long as I am given what I need! I am not saying that other clients aren’t important, just that I hope that the therapists are sufficiently competent for my needs.

I haven’t seen the advantage of CIMT.

Nice work with the pergola!

Yes, there is a name for the variabilities. It’s like the stock market, or velocities in turbulent flow. There are the detailed transients and the long-term trends. A bit like the actual weather (which is daily) and the climate (which is annual or even decadal). For stroke rehab we need to measure the long-term trends and ignore the transients. Difficult since we live in the transients.

Simon

Andrew

Andrew Sorry

Never a need to apologise - but as a social nicety a welcome sentiment

Andrew disagree with your view on “

I think your agreeing it!
I have found - in my very limited experience; because I’ve not had much support - The focus is on generating the numbers not constructing information that underpins decisions that have a clear shared understanding of a journey - Which is our ‘long haul’

Andrew Such progress has to be measured.

Yes but no. Such progress has to be noted in a useful fashion that is not necessarily measured I suspect I am now just splitting hairs in the semantics.

Point was and I didn’t articulate it all or perhaps clearly but we are on a journey so what we apply in our life after stroke expands the boundary of capability towards able. The activities that do that some of which will be exercises need to be adjusted and the adjustment needs to be on the basis of evidence and evidence needs logs which are a record of achievement and therefore also serve the aim of reinforcing emotional and motivational dimensions of our journey and our sticking to effort. Hence my s curve comment at the weekend about one should make the effort even if the progress is not yet visible because the futures progress is grounded in the past efforts and the rate of achievement is non-linear.

My grasp of maths comprehensive sine wave but doesn’t bring a visceral understanding to either least square or “fitting a cosine”. My curiosity would like to understand 🙂

Andrew I also disagree with the therapist’s detailed methods

Yes this is where I think they are educated without an appreciation of the effect of that which they cannot imagine and that is why I think SIG has an important role in adding the paradigms that are absent to their training and then their practise.

Andrew not saying that other clients aren’t important, just that I

All that clients are important and they are equal to imagining or experiencing some needs so have visceral understanding but they (generally) don’t have understanding around ours nor in my experience have they had awareness of That lack

Yes the stock market was the model in my mind when I was referring to the tendencies to plot the perturbations not the trend I have in mind that it has a crossover somewhere with a binomial theorem but again my maths is not strong enough to know whether that’s just complete bullshit - I have an image in my mind of a triangle with numbers in it where each row is the sum of the two above or something and is attributed to somebody like Nelson or Newton… Fragments of a hazy recall

I just dictated this with the following view in front of me

Andrew

Many thanks. Nice clouds! I did the same yesterday just before sunrise - nice and pink but not such high quality.

Pascal’s triangle is what you’re looking for. These are the binomials and expressible in terms of factorials. Don’t get me started on trinomials and the like! Newton did a colossal amount including self-experimentation using a spoon and his own eyeball. Doesn’t bear thinking about. He followed it up eventually by chasing people violently for their taxes as Master of the Mint. Praised, yes, and deservedly so, but obsessed and strange.

For good old-fashioned chaos but at its simplest, try the logistic map.

Andrew

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