Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
Balancing Act
14 November 2025
During Reliant's therapy evaluation I'd expressed my concern about Joyce's sense of balance. She had just fallen backwards in the Kaiser garage but she falls backwards a lot.
Yesterday's dart game was an attempt to get her to feel more balanced, focusing on the bullseye instead of the floor. And today, working with Kevin and Cassie, they had her stand on a compressible platform.
The blue foam she is standing on sinks with her weight. The idea is to accustom her to an unstable ground so when she stands on the linoleum she feels more secure.
So the exercise is to move around on the foam, shifting your weight from left to right while remaining upright with their help. Then you sit down a minute before standing on the solid floor.
She did fine.
Before we went to the gym, she had walked all the way around the facility, as she does every day I get her up. And after, she did 126 steps (well, 252) on the SciFit three times.
So her issues with balance don't seem to be related to her physical capacity so much as her fear of falling. All the way around the facility, she kept saying she was afraid.
But she was doing fine. Even when her shoe caught on the linoleum floor and she stumbled, she caught herself before I could steady her.