I worked with Luba yesterday and is she unsnapped my pants, she told me that, “Adam says hi!” I was surprised at this statement and responded with, “Awww Adam!!! … Phil!!!” She looked at me questioningly and I always forget that nobody really knew that I called Adam, “Phil.” She had seen him at Kristen’s wedding and then she asked me why I call him “Phil.”
My mind automatically went back some for years ago when I worked with him and Jesse at the Kaiser machine for the first time. For some reason after this session, I was at the front desk talking with Dusty and Jesse. Adam sat in the chair next to me and I asked him his name. He kind of smiled at me and slightly shook his head. I thought I heard Jesse call him Phil when we were working at the Kaiser machine so I told him that I will call him “Phil.” He laughed and told me his name was Adam. I think that may have been the day that Dusty, Dan, Jesse, and Adam named me “Daisy.” Silly boys!
Before we started working, Luba talked with me and my mom about possibly using a slide board to help me transfer and then she started working on my knee. After working it a bit, see attached the belt to my ankle and put me in traction for a while. I didn’t feel really good and I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was the weather, (it was a little bit rain-y).
She told me to lift my left leg up after she put my knee and one of the Styrofoam tubes. I swear my leg felt like it weighed 500 pounds! I tried a number of times and it was not budging! Yep. Just what I thought, 500 pounds! She thought for a moment and since my leg was not moving, she began pressing her fingers down my shin and a little bit on my quad. I got movement right after this! She told me that it was reflexive and watched how my leg moved. She told me that it was my spinal cord sending the signals and not my brain so it was a ” spinal cord reflex loop.”
I had her repeat that phrase a few times and told her that it sounded very professional. She said she had to look up what it was really called; but it kind of stunk that my brain was not communicating with my leg to get it to move rather it was just my spinal cord. The spinal cord is part of the central nervous system so I guess I’ll take it. With MS, my central nervous system is all out of whack!
I looked up what the reflex was really cold and it is a reflex arc or knee-jerk reflex arc.
The Reflex Arc
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A motor neuron carries the message from the central nervous system to the effector. In a knee-jerk reflex arc the sensory neuron directly connects to the motor neuron in the spinal cord. This is called a simple reflex arc. from the spindle (receptor) to where it connects with the motor neuron in the spinal cord.
Wikipedia:
“The patellar reflex is a clinical and classic example of the monosynaptic reflex arc. There is no interneuron in the pathway leading to contraction of the quadriceps muscle. Instead the bipolar sensory neuron synapses directly on a motor neuron in the spinal cord.”
Whatever it’s called, I just want my brain to communicate with my leg muscles like it used to rather than just my spine! Looking up all of these technical terms reminded me of looking up “proprioceptor” at Adam’s suggestion and taking that quiz which I failed.