Lisa is one of my contacts on Flickr, and her partner, Robb, has been recovering from a spinal cord injury for about a year now. He has only recently begun to regain feeling in his feet, so they figured they would try to map out the regions where he could feel again (pink), and where he couldn’t (green). Here’s how she described their method in her blog post:
After some trial and error, we arrived at a method by which I would run a knitting needle along Robb’s foot, and he would tell me what he could and couldn’t feel. I would raise my left hand into Robb’s line of vision, and once I started moving the needle with my right hand, I would wiggle the fingers of my left hand. At that point, Robb would describe whether or not he could feel what I was doing by saying, “no….no….no….no….yes…..yes….no….no…..” I would run the needle softly over the same area a few times, and then apply colored tape to map where he could and couldn’t feel.
The result is beautiful, fascinating, and so wonderfully human. It’s the opposite of the depersonalizing medical markup you could imagine being applied in a hospital. Instead it’s vibrant, real, and inspiring. I think it has a lot to do with that fantastic quilt!
Thanks to Robb and Lisa for letting me write about them!
WOW. Best of luck to Robb and Lisa as they continue to progress. I really love the quilt that Robb’s foot is resting on.
I’ve often thought about doing something related with my partial blindness in my right eye. I’d close my good eye and look out onto a familiar scene, such as my bookshelf from my couch. But instead of marking up myself, I’d somehow mark the scene itself with colored markers. Just to understand a) what I’m missing and b) the beauty of having a 2nd eye