Balance Therapy - 6/9/11

Joe had his second round of balance therapy the other day.  He was strapped in a harness once again and inside the movement booth.  The booth allows the area where his feet is located to rotate and try to make him stumble forward or backward.  The purpose is to try and have his feet react to catch his balance.

Here is what I can watch on the computer screen.  The little man in the middle simulates Joe and Joe also has a computer screen that he can see.  The object is to put the little man in the yellow box and then move to the red box when it appears.

The therapist decided to get rid of the video man and changed it to a UFO which now looks like it's flying around.  The marks that appear on my screen show the movement Joe makes with his body going from the yellow square to the middle red square.  As you can see, it's a little unsteady at the moment.

This is the view I have from my seat.

This is going to several boxes and when a new red one appears, Joe has 10 seconds to make it from the yellow one to a red one.  Note the "straight" lines.

Now Joe is doing tai chi steps, forward and backwards, down this padded hallway.  The movement is a slow heel to toe roll when walking forward and the reverse when walking backwards.  At this point, it is hard for Joe to have controlled moves such as this so the therapist stays pretty close behind him.

Balance Therapy

Today was Joe's first day of therapy to help him try and regain his balance.  There was a series of tests he was put through to give a baseline of where he is and where he needs to be.

Here Joe is supposed to be stepping one foot inside each of the blocks while walking forward.  He then is supposed to walk backwards doing the same thing.  The object on the floor looks almost like a flat ladder.  Forward wasn't too bad, walking backward was very difficult.

Here he is strapped into a vest, almost like sky-diving, to measure all types of movement in this booth.  The floor under his feet can rotate up and down and sideways.  Being harnessed allows him to stumble without falling.  The computer on the left is measuring his baseline for each of the 10 tests that were done.  He was below average on 9 of them.