Biofeedback, that was weird.. more answers.

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So I had my first physical therapy appointment with biofeedback today and even though I looked it up online I was still not prepared for it.. The stickers used for the sensor go in your butt crack and the theropist has to put them there..(was not as bad as having a manual exam with a finger in the butt for a while).

Big thing is that it showed exactly what I am dealing with and what may come next..

I may have one more appointment with that theropist and then my care will be moved over.

One thing that came up today is that I may have to get a nerology assessment done as my muscles are working at times and in ways that they should not be.

Nerology scares me because I know how much bad stuff has happened to my head over the years and I would not be surprised if some of this is because of all of that.

I am happy that answers are happening but not that they are leading to more testing..

I just got to make calls today and make sure everything is set up for the next steps..

Someone stop this marry go round... I want off.

 

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I hear you ThatFLGuy. What a hassle.

 

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I like my neurologist. She listens and helps. If I understand, they are pretty much there for the physical part of the nerve functioning. I had been referred to her after a bunch of other tests didn't pin down an issue. She did the "stick me with electrical shocks" thing to measure whether nerve transmission was normal (it wasn't.) Those can be described as "uncomfortable", but no more than that. There is a longer one with sensors but not the shocks. It diagnosed my Peripheral Neuropathy - which she has been treating ever since (pretty much a lot of help.) The MRI did find I had had a small stroke, which I didn't know and doesn't seem to have affected me, and later she diagnosed me with Carpal Tunnel, referred me to the surgeon.
She happens to be the Sleep Apnea doctor in town, too.
So far, there has been nothing about the Mental side - I've been seeing her for 7 years - but you and I are different issues.
She's not a neurosurgeon, and there are none here, which is why I ended up in the big city for the brain growth. (Yeah. My friends were amazed that I had a brain....). She's a character, which turns off some patients, but not me.
She has never told me to go to a psychologist, and doesn't have the reputation of doing that, unlike some Urologists we could name.
So I guess I'm lucky. Hope you are, too. At least they are testing you, not giving you the runaround or the brushoff.

 

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Wow. What a lot to deal with.... Good for all of you for carrying on ...and may you continue to search for treatments that help.

 

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My incontinence has improved quite a bit since I started PT. I do the biofeedback twice a week. Yes, it’s a pain when she attaches the electrodes ( she goes up the legs of my shorts). It really helped me identify the appropriate muscles. I had been doing my exercises wrong. I didn’t get the finger in the butt.

It is a bit embarrassing for me, but I can’t imagine having to stick these electrodes in the butts of old fat men. My guess is that they don’t talk that up in PT school.

PT is something I’d recommend for those that are post prostate surgery

 

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Hang in there.

 

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Hi FLGuy, you are making good progress but in order to get those exact answers all of that testing is necessary. I know it's a big pain in the rear (literally and figuratively) :O but at least you are seeing people who are interested in what's going on with you and they want to help. So just hang in there. And as "they" (whoever they is) say, this too will pass!

 

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Hey FLGuy, just wanted to touch base as I know neurology can get frightening, but it does deliver some very direct answers to your unique wiring so to speak! You never know, but what you fear now may end up being your own body trying to fix itself. In my case it turns out, due to all of the spinal trauma my body has been busy building a secondary neural network. There are a few books out there on this that as an engineer with a number of internal short circuits / blown fuses, I found very insightful. As I may have mentioned previously, I am a true anomaly to a number of Drs. Especially new ones.
Last year when I was undergoing a series of CT’s, MRI’s etc.to locate the tumor on my C-Spine, at one point the Radiologist came back after leaving for about 30 minutes and apologized that someone had mistakenly taken my wheelchair. I told her “no problem, I don’t have a wheel chair”. At which point she went back to her screen repeatedly, then trying to manipulate my lower back with her fingers (which no longer resembles any human man’s back from so much scar tissue etc., looks like one single muscle over my entire Lumbar Spine area) while calling in a few other Radiologists. They asked me if I could walk, how did I walk etc.etc. Because there was no longer a connection at the normal neural junction, and should not be able to move my legs, period! At which point I asked them to reach out to my Neurologists at Northwestern, they were the ones who worked very hard for almost two years at least once a week if not more, to get me back as much function as possible. It was a three hour drive from hell each way due to my back pain, but sometimes you just have suck it up and in my case thank God these people cared enough to fight so hard for me.
I am glad you posted and certainly appreciate any apprehension you might have, especially changing PT’s on you when you finally found an advocate you can trust. I’m sorry about that, but progress is not always a straight line. Do as much research as you feel comfortable with, admittedly dry reading! My hope is that you will become more familiar with, hence more comfortable with what’s going on and what’s to come!
We’re all hoping the best for you. If I can tell you anything from my experience, neurology was by far the least painful, least invasive of all of the things I’ve been through!
Hang in there, keep us posted!

 

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Hi, FLGuy: I sailed into Norwegian ports 3 times in the 1970S. Just weeks ago, I stumbled on an article in The Guardian's US e-edition on attitude, positive mindset. By coincidence, it mentions 2 of the ports. By less coincidence I live in Alaska, with short days in winter, although the sun never goes down all the way. So, I'm familiar with Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) and all the bitching about it. (Alaskans are champions at bitching).
Substitute "incontinence" and "lockdown" for "SAD")
I thought these extracts might be worth thinking about, for all of us.

Quote: Leibowitz conducted her initial studies long before the new coronavirus left Wuhan – and she is realistic about the challenges of trying to see the positive in the pandemic. “A change in mindset is not a cure-all for everything,” she emphasises. It can’t simply eliminate our anxieties about the job insecurity or the fear of losing a loved one, and we should not attempt to suppress those emotions.
[break]
Even so, she suspects that adopting the positive wintertime mindset could make a second lockdown a little less daunting for those who worry about keeping their mood buoyed in the bad weather. Since the risk of contagion is much lower outside, we might also adapt to the Scandinavian way of outdoor socialising (lockdown regulations permitting). Tromsø, for example, has an open-air cinema, so residents can enjoy atmospheric film screenings in the eerie Arctic darkness. As the Norwegians say: “There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” Unquote

Hammerfest has over 2 months with no sun, Tromsø about 6 weeks, and both are in mountain territory that screens them from some sun.

Sounds like you might be a Norwegian!

I looked up Tromsø and Hammerfest in WIKI. I'd forgotten much about them, and it was kinda fun.
Cheers!

 

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@AlasSouth As much as I love living right next to 11,000 ft. tall mountains to the east, I do not love how they hide the sun for hours after it would otherwise rise were the horizon flat, nor how the sun sets hours earlier due to the high mountains to the west. We lose six hours of direct sunlight because of this, and yes, it's definitely hard in winter. You mentioned above, "the sun never sets" while you were talking about winter. Isn't it the case that the sun never sets in the summer (which I've seen myself there), and never rises in the winter?

@ThatFLGuy There is no reason to be afraid of neurology.

 

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P.S. to ThatFLGuy and Sprung87 & everyone. Google "Google Scholar", which gets you access to the science journals. No ads for "Bombas or politicians. Then search for "Kari Leibowitz". You'll get a lot of studies/articles, some with several co-authors, a lot about mindset. The quote above is from: "Winter is Coming: Winter Mindset and well-being in Norway." But several other articles might be worth reading at least the Abstract. This is one of the rare free ones, in PDF format. She's more readable, less prone to using language/jargon none of non-science types can easily interpret.
I use Google Scholar for researching my various medical conditions, but can't afford the cost of many articles, unless they are on the free Government website "PubMed".
I have a subscription, fairly cheap, that sends me notice of new studies for 2 of my conditions, but Incontinence isn't one of them. Nuts. That comes through "MediFocus". I guess we could use Google Scholar for that, too. The "Abstracts" usually give you enough info to decide if you want to read it, or even can read it.
Hope this helps someone.

 

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Hi @snow, If you're talking about Alaska and other places way up north, the sun never sets in the summer, particularly as you get closer to the North Pole. And it doesn't rise in the winter. I think maybe in the Anchorage area (or at the latitude) they may get just a scant few hours of sunlight.

 

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Yeah I had biofeedback years ago. Laid on my right side with my bare hip on a metal plate with a wet towel between it and my hip. I was so lucky to get stickers. (Not even a smiley face sticker afterwards). No sir! I got a big metal rod, oddly resembling a kind of toy used in that area, and had it rammed (felt like it but was slow) up my rear end then had electric impulses introduced to measure sphincter tone and muscle use. I wasn't wearing a diaper for it of course. Just a chux pad under me. I wasn't warned that it sometimes causes bladder voiding. And it did. But it didn't dribble down to the pad. It whizzed out onto the floor. If that wasn't enough insult to my pride and her floor, upon standing, my bowels decided that electrical zaps made them wanna go! So yeah, I scrapped on the floor. Afterwards I went to Mc Donald's and got a Mc griddle.

 

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Hi, all: NOAA has a sunrise/sunset calculator at:

NOAA Improved Sunrise/Sunset Calculation

Anchorage, Alaska, on Dec 22nd has sunrise at 10:15 Am and Sunset at 3:42 Pm. That's "apparent" sunrise. There are about half a dozen different kinds of "sunrises". Well, 4.
Where I am, just South of Anchorage, the shortest day of the year has sunrise about 10:30 and sunset about 3:30. However, twilight is about an hour for each. And we don't have light pollution at our house, so the stars and meteors are spine-tingling. Then there is the Northern Lights, when they deign to show.... We used to walk the dog to the clear-cut behind us for her final walk of the day. What a sky!
Fairbanks gets over an hour of official sun, I think.
Full moon tonight. Arrooooooo.
60 miles north of Fairbanks, at Chena Hotsprings, I think they have one day without sun. The Arctic Circle is kind of defined as the place where the sun doesn't show for one day a year. (It's more fun to define it that way, anyway.)

 

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Yup in Anchorage, I remember going to school in the dark and coming home in the dark. (Maldoon Christian school) and tin foil on all our bedroom windows.

 

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The full moon is actually on Halloween proper, Saturday, not tonight.

 

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@Steven1980 Was the aluminum foil used on the windows for insulation, and dus it work?

 

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My daughter in Albuquerque, quit her good paying job, cashed in her retirement and moved to Anchorage in 2003. She didn't know anybody there but friends of a friend invited her to stay with them for a couple weeks while she got work and a place of her own. She met her present husband there a few years later, he had never lived anyplace but Anchorage. He left his business to his children, retired and the two of them moved to Arizona but still have a place in Anchorage. She loved Alaska and the lack of sunshine didn't bother her at all. She liked the snow and the sports connected to it. They haven't spent a full summer in Lake Havasu City, AZ yet! But people are so adaptable. I sometimes think about the people who walked across the world to get to North and South America. What courage and stamina we have as human beings.

 

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@billliveshere That’s what I thought, But AlasSouth said “with short days in winter, although the sun never goes down all the way...”

 

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Hi @snow, I guess there's one way to find out for sure! That is to go there! Since it's not likely many people fly up there in the dead of winter the airlines may offer good fares!
Hi @ritanofsinger, going from Anchorage to Lake Havasu City is quite a change! And I here thought all along that moving from Pennsylvania to Florida would be a huge change! :O Yes, human stamina and courage is quite amazing but we have to do it in order to survive, whether it's just getting used to something like the upcoming time change this Sunday or walking across the Bering land bridge in the trek from Asia to North America as the very first settlers did ever so many eons ago!