Adverse Vaccine Reaction: Getting Stronger
Cue the sports-training-montage music from the movie Rocky. In recent days, Lilly has shown marked improvement in her strength and body control. We still remind her to be “careful” or to “go slow” on stairs, but as you can see in this new video update, Lilly is getting stronger.
I don’t really know (and haven’t had the time to look up) how the physical therapy needed for the massive neurological deficits caused by Lilly’s adverse rabies vaccine reaction and the resulting meningoencephalomyelitis (inflammation of the brain and lining of the brain and spinal cord) might differ from regular strength and agility training.
BUT, I do know what we did to help Ginko recover from his MANY knee surgeries.
So, that’s sort of what we’ve been doing, except with more stairs. After Ginko had TPLO on each knee, he could NOT run, jump, or do stairs for 12 weeks.
Essentially, Lilly’s at-home “rehab” consists of:
- Walking on leash: We’re now up to a full mile a day, including the big hill to the west of the house.
- Walking up and down stairs 4-5 times back to back: Our goals are to build her butt strength on the climb and to work on front strength and control on the descent.
- Walking backwards on cue: Again, to build rear leg / hip strength.
- Hopping up and down from the sofa: We’re trying to get her agility jumping strength back.
- Playing some short-distance fetch (on carpet or outside on grass): For many reasons … I’ll try to get some video of that soon so that you can see how much she tumbles. She completely freaked me out over the weekend by doing an airborne barrel roll … jumping to catch the ball.
In just the last day or two, we’ve seen a leap in her ability to do stairs “safely.” That has been a real concern because the last thing we need is a concussion, spinal injury, or orthopedic injury from her tumbling down the stairs.
Check out this GO GET DADDY video from Monday (3/5/2012) morning: