Washed Away

No post yesterday as, unfortunately, our New Years Day was washed away on a sea of tears! I don't know why, it was just one of those days that arrives, smacks you in the face, hangs around to torment you for several hours, then moves off!
Today has been much better thank goodness. Pete didn't get on very well with FES yesterday for some reason, he kept fiddling with the control, adjusting the level of the stimulation. In the morning I marked his leg with permanent marker - that didn't go very well as when we took the electrodes off the marks had transferred from his leg onto the pads, helpful!!! So we assumed that had damaged the electrodes and interfered with the signal strength which had caused his problems during the day. We didn't put it on this morning and got ready to confess to Suzanne that we had wrecked her gadget! Luckily, after explaining to Suzanne, she said that was no problem and that wouldn't affect it (huge sigh of relief), so back on it went with her showing me where to put the pads. Apparently Pete has perfect legs - skinny!!!! This means it is easy to find the boney nodules and muscle which are the best places. Once the electrodes are on then there is a test button just to check foot movement and then they can be moved slightly if necessary, before connecting the whole thing and completing the circuit. It has worked fine today, so still don't really know what caused his problems yesterday.
Today's exercises with Suzanne and Susie involved the leg lifting we have to do every day, and they were very pleased with the progress he has made, also bouncing the gym ball himself and then bouncing it to and from Suzanne and she kept changing direction slightly to move his balance from one side to the other. He did this perfectly so this is another one we can add to our repertoire - I haven't attempted it before as was afraid he could overbalance and fall. His balance is really very good considering. He has been doing walking as instructed as well. Then it came to the dreaded foot sliding which Pete finds very very hard, so they decided to try a different approach which involves him lying on his front on the bed (this is quite a difficult position for him to get into, the right arm gets in the way) and then lifting his leg from the knee up into the air, my goodness this was so much easier for him to do, also he can hook his right leg over the left and use the left leg to lift it as far as possible to get the stretch, which means he is more in control. He was quite relaxed when doing it today. Then, to finish, step exercises in the kitchen. By the end of the session he was quite tired as had had a full hour of non-stop effort.
This evening we watched Celebrity Mastermind and I don't mind telling you I actually did quite well!!! Whenever Pete knew the answer he just said 'yes', so who is to know whether he was right or not!!! He may have been cheating!