Chapter Thirteen

Rebound

After the lessons of Mount St. Helen, I now had to give physical conditioning some serious thought. I knew that it was important, but had taken it for granted.

The principle of exercise was simple. The development of muscle tissue is based on a demand system. We are as strong as we need to be. To increase our strength the need must be increased.

If the need stays the same the muscles do the job. If the need is increased, beyond normal, the muscles are damaged and this triggers the system to rebuild them, but with added muscle, to meet the increased demand. The weight lifters say "No pain-No gain."

The important point, here, is that the muscles need time to rebuild. If we tear them down and don't give them this time they will not only not get stronger but will continue to be damaged as in the chapter on woodcutting.

I decided on walking on Monday--Recover on Tuesday--Walk on Wednesday--Recover on Thursday--Walk on Friday and take the week-end off.

The first week I would walk two miles on each of the three days. Fast and hard enough to stress my legs but still stay below MG.

The second week I increased the miles to three and tried to improve my time.

In the third week I was doing four miles. On Monday this took me one hour and fifteen minutes. By Friday I had cut it to one hour and eight minutes. I felt I was making good progress.

Forth week and I was doing five miles and maintaining my time.

In the fifth week I did six miles and was feeling good. Total time was one hour and thirty eight minutes. I wondered if I'd ever go four miles an hour but it didn't matter. This wasn't a race. I was trying for endurance and I was succeeding.

At the beginning of this training I had been very careful to mentally prepare myself for the walks. Fantasy-meditation and coffee with one mestinon. (I still use one or two mestinon tablet’s each day.) I can't recall, exactly, what happened in the sixth week to distract me but I am sure my preparations were disturbed or forgotten on that Monday morning.

Two hundred yards into the walk MG appeared in my legs. Just a little, but enough to make me stop and consider my situation. I didn't want to continue if it meant not being able to make the return trip. I was resting on my staff with my legs locked and the muscles relaxed. My mood was good. My frame of mind was good and after about sixty seconds I decided to try again. "If MG showed up again I would return home.", I thought.

I walked another two hundred yards and was doing fine. The MG had not returned so I shrugged my shoulders and continued. I had just convinced myself that it had been a fluke when it occurred again. This time I had gone almost four hundred yards. I stopped again, relaxing my legs. This time I had walked at least twice as far as I did the first time that I had to stop and rest. Two hundred yards, stop, four hundred yards, stop. This didn't make sense. I had fully expected to go a shorter distance, have it set in again and then return home after a short rest. I made the decision to go one more time, so, after sixty seconds of leaning on my staff, I began to walk. I passed the two hundred yards that had seen the first appearance of MG, past the four hundred yards that had forced the second stop and I continued to walk down the road, apparently free.

The necessity to make a third stop did not occur until I was at least a mile from home. I used the sixty second rest to consider what had happened so far. The one thing that stood out was that each segment of my walk was longer than the one before it. This did not make sense and went against all past knowledge. The reverse should have been true because, once I had experienced MG, if I pushed myself to continue in the same direction I should have intensified the MG. I decided to keep walking.

Six miles later I was back at my home with no further evidence of MG weakness.

I knew what had happened and now I had to know the "why" and the "how."

While everything was clear in my mind I went straight to my studio to draw a graph. Maybe I could get a clue. I wanted to understand this. Maybe it would cancel out earlier theories. I didn't know.

I reasoned that if I had goofed on my preparations for today’s walk then my LF must have been low. Using fifty percent as normal I put my LF at forty percent on the graph.

If my walking resulted in MG then I must have violated the LF from the beginning and it took the Immune System 200yds to lower the LF to produce the MG weakness. I then stopped, relaxed my muscles, allowing the Immune System to release its hold on the LF, letting it rise again.

I reasoned that if the MG did not return the second time for 400yds then I either had produced lower impulses on this segment or the LF had been higher resulting in a smaller violation.

My effort had been as near the same the second time as the first so it must be that I started the second segment with a higher LF.

I put this information on the graph.

The third segment was a repeat of the second. The forth, since I experienced no MG, had to have been walked entirely below the LF. The LF must have been up to normal for the last five miles.

When I stopped to rest the LF didn't just return to where it had been. It went higher. It rebounded! A rebound effect that I had accidentally controlled with a result that I would not have imagined.

It is my belief that all Truth, Knowledge, and Wisdom is from God. It exists like the air we breath. We merely borrow it, use it for our purposes. Man has never had a single thought that God did not have before him. If we are in need of knowledge we should ask God, the source, and He will give it to us. First, though, and this is important, we must stop our shouting so that we can hear God's whisper.

"Wow!"

When Joan's sister-in-law, and my friend, Sue Mountain, read about the rebound effect she said "Wow!" Wow is the perfect word. Sue could appreciate the importance of the discovery of the rebound as it would apply to a person with MG. She sensed how valuable this little tool might be in the management of the condition. We sat and discussed the possibilities and my thoughts returned to Steve. Joan and I could have made great progress. How would we have applied it to Steve? My mind grappled with the problem. Let's see.

Having thirty years practice in relaxing my muscles I've become some what of an expert. So much so that I take it for granted, but, working with a child, it is not something that one can assume they will be able to do. When I say relaxing, I'm not speaking of just sitting still but, more importantly, lowering the amplitude and quantity of signals to the muscles.

Bio-feed-back, as I understand it, would have been an excellent tool and I think I would have used it as a first approach. Steve was very smart (Proud Father) and would have caught on fast. Train him to remove the signals from his muscles while he was standing with his legs locked. Once he had mastered this the road to rebuilding his very tiny muscles would be open.

Remember? I said, from my experience, the farther the MG person is away from good strong muscles the closer he is to MG. The smaller his muscles are, relative to his size, the closer he is also. Muscles that have been bedridden for a year or so, are both small and weak.

Before sufficient effort can be made to actually "STRESS" the muscle, Myasthenia Gravis is experienced. On the surface it seems hopeless. Without the ability to stress the muscle, new muscle cannot be developed. It is a demand system and MG blocks the possibility of making that demand.

Lets assume that several months have passed and Steve has mastered the lowering of signals to his muscles by applying the techniques of Bio-feed-back. The next step would have been to explain our goals. Show Steve, on the graphs, what we would be trying to achieve and explain the importance of his role. Prepare him, in advance, for the possibility of small failures along the way and then build his excitement by showing the goal that we could achieve.

Using a "walker" we get him to take enough steps to begin to experience MG. It is very important that he recognize the very early signs and not wait until he is in full MG weakness. In the past, we had always tried to avoid the onset of MG weakness but now it would be our first goal. In this way it should generate excitement instead of disappointment. The excitement would help to raise Steve's LF. Steve is now given the walker to rest on, while he locks his legs and removes the signals from his muscles. (60 seconds was the perfect time for me and we probably would have to experiment to find Steve's "Perfect time.")

The second segment would be like the first and, if we had done everything perfectly, would be longer because of the rebound effect. The third, then, would be longer still and before Steve returned to his bed he would have stressed his muscles enough to stimulate the building of new muscle tissue. At first this might consist of only a few dozen cells but, when you are at the bottom, any progress is fantastic.

The next day would be a rest day and, if MG was still present on the third day, then another rest day should follow. Getting him back walking as soon as possible, to use the new muscle tissue would be essential so that the old and new could be stressed, building still more cells.

I think the rebound effect could have been the tool to get Steve out of bed!

Wow!
DEFINITLY WOW!

After the discovery of the rebound effect my thoughts, once again, returned to the problem of climbing Mt. St. Helen. I now had a new tool in my tool pouch. In addition to good conditioning I had the rebound to fall back on. The next several months found me testing the validity of the rebound theory. It never failed in working from the tests I applied, and soon I had built a good bit of confidence in it.

In the evenings, after putting in a good day of work, I usually had double vision as I would sit and watch the TV news. This is very annoying and I have wrestled with the problem for as long as I can remember. I usually fought the onset of double vision until I couldn't stand it and then would close one eye so that I could escape it. Maybe, now, I could solve this problem.

I tried relaxing the muscles as soon as the double vision started and discovered that it is very hard to relax or remove the signals from my eyes. I did achieve a partial success and knew that the rebound would work with this problem but new ways would have to be found to relax the eye muscles.

On review of my daily activity I wondered why I didn't have double vision more, as I used my eyes a great deal in my work. Why did it only occur when I sat and watched TV? What was different? I had thought that it was simply because I was tired. Was it truly that simple or was there more to it? I reasoned that it couldn't be fatigue alone because, many times, when I'm tired, I drive the car without experiencing double vision. What was the difference?

The problem lingered in my mind for several months. Each time I watched TV or drove the car it came to the surface. In this way the answer became apparent and it proved to be rather simple.

When I drove the car or did anything else during the day my eyes were constantly moving. When I watched TV they were fixed to one spot. Simple.

I found that the best way to remove the signal from the muscles that move my eyes to the left was to move them to the right. I could also remove the signals from the eye muscles that I used to watch TV by keeping my head stationary and looking at the ceiling. At the first signs of double vision I would look at the ceiling for 15-20 second. Then back to the TV. After repeating three or four times the problem was solved.

By applying this new technique I have since watched TV free of double vision on many occasions. There are limits, of course, and if I'm very, very tired I might as well go to bed. With my new tool I felt good about the chances for success in climbing Mt. St. Helen and was ready to put together a plan. A good part of the trouble the last time, I felt, happened because I failed to properly prepare. We had camped ten or twelve miles from the base camp and in my rush to get started I had driven off without opening the garage door, without meditating and fantasizing. The next time I would:

1. Train for a month walking before leaving home.
2. Camp at the base of the mountain to minimize effort before starting the climb.
3. Have someone else sign me in while I concentrated on coffee, Mestinon, meditation and fantasy.
4. Use rebound if all else failed.

Mt. St. Helen was in for the fight of her life!

REBOUND

The chapter on "Rebound" was almost left out of this book as it had occurred so close to the publication date. I really had very little time to play with the concept and prove it to my own mind. I'm glad I took the chance as I have used the technique many times since then with excellent success. Double vision while driving, when it does occur, is a problem and I pull off the road immediately, relax the muscles and within minutes can be on my way. A small inconvenience instead of a major catastrophe. I still walk a half mile or more each day and I stop often. The "rebound" seems to work even when my legs are just sluggish with no true MG weakness. I believe I have become sensitive to signs that occur BEFORE MG signs occur. The ability to relax muscles completely is something that requires practice and does not come easy. All the signals to the muscles must be removed. Just holding a muscle still, without movement, does not mean that it is in a relaxed state.

I want very much to emphasize the value of this tool that I call "rebound" in the management of MG. If it fails to work for the reader on the first attempt, don't discard the idea too quickly. Play with it, practice relaxing and I believe it will become a good friend.