Hi Manc11

Thanks for your info. First off I need to say I am not familiar wth Langerhans Hystocytosis so anything I say re: exercise, you should check out with your specialist to check if it is ok and get some help from a physio.

Will you walk again? This is a very important question for you and I am sorry I can't really answer it. As I said I don't know your illness but from a quick bit of reading there is a wide range of severity of the disease and being a rare disease I would suspect it would be quite hard for the people who have treated you to come up with an answer. Here would be some factors to consider:

* depends on whether anyof the brain tissue damage is temporary and reversable or whther the damage s permanent. In a lot of systemic diseases it is often a mixture of these two things.

*you are young and have age on your side. Younger people do have more potential for recovery as the brain seems less set and more amenable to changes.

*neuroplasticity - the ability for the brain to remodel itself (and on some cases even regrow cells) has greatly surprised us in more recent years. The brain has much more ability to change when extensive practice is used. In order to drive positive neuroplastic changes and relearn movement practice that is intensive and extensive, and highly demanding but leaves you feeling a bit more confident about your abilities at the end and not despondent, may provide the best condiond for improving

*motivation makes a huge diference. I take it you may not be short on this so giving it your best shot can help. However if you find it impossible to improve then you shouldn't blame yourself- better to accept that you did the best you can

Weakness

From what you described the weakness might benefit from progressive resistance training where you go for strngthening and muscle hypertrophy. So this is your typical weighhts on the gym you repeat each exercise 8-12 times so you can't do anymore. An overall weights program may be good and in the legs working on the muscles that work against gravity -so gluts quads, hamstrings, calf muscles. If by chance your muscles are too weak for weights in the gym a physio can devise other forms of resistance that can bridge the gap - so using finer increments of weights, elastic rubber bands (called theraband) . Howeveer i would definitely get the go ahead from your specialist - with systemic disease sometimes the normal adaptions to weights is affected and you cpuld do yourself some harm. Second i wpuld get a tailored program with a physio or a Personal trainer who under supervision from a physio. A physio could assess you for the weakest muscles and design a targgetted programme.

Balance in walking

From what you described when you attempt to wakl the information from your inner ear is not getting processed in your cerebellum and informing what your muscles need to do in order to keep your balance. This is normally a very fast system and it is relatively automatic - so now you can't trust itand you have to consciously focus on what you are doing - even then you can't keep your balance for long. You may also have some incoordination that is throwing you off balance.

One of the best solutions for practising to try to improve your balance is Body Weight Support Treadmill Training (BWSTT) or body weight support overland waalking. Have you tried this? Here you wear a harness a bit like rock climbers or abseillers and you are suspended overhead. In your case you don't want much support as your muscles may be strong enough to hold your legs against gravity, but the harness acts as a "safety net" in this case allowing to practice walking hundreds of steps at a time and learning from mistakes but the support is firm enoght that when you throw yourself off balance it keeps you upright and you can continue stepping. As yoou get better you slowly make the harness less supportive to increases the challenge. In order to benefit fom this you should be doing at least 1/2 an hour a day, preferably more and you may need to build up to it. This is definitely a physio gym activity.

Hope this is of help