… the present your friend gets you for Christmas is something you just bought for yourself. I mean, that’s impressive. Even my family can’t get that accurate!

I had my second occupational therapy session tonight and I have improved a lot even since Tuesday’s session; my range of motion before was 15/25 and now it’s 25/40 (those numbers represent the corresponding angle to which I can bend my wrist back and forth… that is, if I bend my wrist forward, it’s not the angle that’s formed between my palm and my forearm, but 180 degrees minus that number).

There’s a magical machine there that I want to own. It’s got a proper name*, but I am calling it the corn-husk machine. It looks like a giant two-slice toaster with a hole in one end which has a canvas tube coming out of it. It’s filled with ground corn husk particles, which feel like really soft sand. The “toast slots” are protected with netting so the corn husk doesn’t fly out. I stuck my hand into the canvas tube and the therapist velcroed the tube around my upper arm so the corn husks wouldn’t fly out. She turned on the machine; extremely warm (but comfortably so) air started puffing up through the corn husk particles in a staggered fashion, making it seem like a massage. Meanwhile, a metal plate hidden under the vast quantities of corn husk started to warm it all up from underneath. Between the soft, warm, dry sensation (like running your fingers through really soft and fluffy sand on a beach) and the soft drone of the machine, I was basically lulled to sleep… but I managed to stay upright and kept doing my hand exercises in the machine. I love the corn husk machine.

*Proper name = fluidotherapy: a dry heat treatment where the hand is placed in a unit filled with a particulate similar to sawdust (ground corn husk). The machine forces warmed air through the particulate to decease joint stiffness, reduce hypersensitivity, and improve circulation.

SO today was my errand-running day off. It was action-packed and now I need to get to bed since I DO have work tomorrow. A half-day, but still…