I’m fascinated by how my muscles are restarting. I was probably too distracted to notice it on my left leg while in the hospital. Or it happened too fast. The progress in my right leg, however, has been a march slow enough to observe in detail. I’ve been waiting on my lateral and medial quad. First I noticed that if I put my hand on the area, it would sometimes prompt them to fire during an exercise. But this initial activity would not be a real contraction. I couldn’t see anything move under my skin. It would be a fibrillation: a series of small twitches that only happened some of the time. Today I first noticed a real, orchestrated effort. A muscle bulged and shifted. I played with holding the contraction. It doesn’t fire every time I want to. I have to think about it in a tricky, indirect way: I can’t think too hard about it, I have to be slightly distracted. And when it does contract, I can hold it for about five seconds before it twitches and relaxes again. I played with my quad until I got it firing in a slightly more reliable way. And I was able to hold the contraction a bit longer. Visual feedback helps tremendously here. I’ve learned over the past six months to squint at my lower extremities like at a squishy puzzle.

My most scared moments are when I think I’ve hurt these parts of mine, which are still connected, but are not reliable reporters. Did I just sprain an ankle? Did I bang my foot too hard? It’s difficult to explain how I think about owning something that is me but so distant. I talk to my feet. “Come on, right foot!” I try to ignore them. The sensation there, most of the time, is like the pinpricks of when a body part falls asleep and then wakes up. I think of it as static. My toes are constantly buzzing with white noise. I am slowly getting sensation back, which means if I press on my toes I get a signal that is above this background.