Kaizen

I have written about this before, and just did a guest blogpost about it, but Kaizen is a really good term.

Kaizen is a Japanese term that loosely means "continuous improvement over time."  In practice it means that small changes over time leads to big improvement.

For me, it was the realization that my recovery wasn't spontaneous.  It was a gradual process, even in the beginning, when the improvements seemed to be great.  Also, it was a process that was augmented by hard physical work.  It's not that I woke one day was able to breathe strong enoughto be taken off the respirator - well, yes, but each day I worked on my lungs and then the lungs were tested each day to see if I was well enough to breathe independently.

The same for walking and standing.  First my toes moved, then my legs, then I slowly gained strength, enough for me to stand with assistance, then to walk a few steps with assistance, then graduated to a walker, then to crutches, then to a cane.

Doctors and other healthcare professionals sometimes put benchmarks on improvements, but I think as long as you work to improve incrementally, you will experience big changes as a result of all the small improvements.