Yesterday, as I went to the laundry room to put my clothes in the dryer, I went down a small staircase. Since I still have issues going down stairs, I made a conscious effort to descend properly and use my left leg. When I got to the bottom I continued towards the laundry room, I noticed something felt weird in my leg. I looked down as I walked and noticed that with each step that it was bending the way it was supposed to. Bam — just like that I went from limping everywhere to walking normally. It was completely involuntary. Before the staircase I was still walking straight-legged and afterwards I was normal.
Since then I’ve been almost completely normal walking everywhere. A few times when I start walking I notice that I’m goosestepping again, but now I know what it feels like to walk normally so I quickly change my gait.
I have a feeling that this process is similar to what Dilbert creator Scott Adams went through with his vocal disorder. Though I would argue losing your voice in certain situations would be much worse than limping, the “remapping” of an area of your brain happened more or less involuntarily. Adams figured out he could get his voice back by rhyming and once he knew what it felt like to talk normally, he could speak much more easily. Now that I know what it feels like to bend my knee when walking, I can do it on a whim instead of trying to force it and look even weirder than with the limp.
Recent Comments