Friday Morning - First Day of Therapy

It's Alison. I'm a bit late in posting... it was a BUSY morning in Dad's room. I was there from about 8am to 1pm, so I'll update to that point and then hopefully Ryan can catch us up later.

When I got there this morning, Dad was sleeping. Sharon had stayed overnight and hadn't gotten any sleep. But she wanted to stay for his morning therapy, so ended up staying another 90 minutes or so. She's a trooper!

They have Dad on a very structured therapy routine which at this point consists of 45 minutes of occupational therapy and 45 minutes of physical therapy in the morning and then 45 minutes each of occupational, speech and physical therapy in the afternoon. So, a total of 3 hours and 45 minutes each day. That's quite the schedule!

Here's the highlights from the morning therapy:

Occupational Therapy with Chelsie and Danielle
The goal of occupational therapy is to reteach and improve Dad's ability to do his basic daily tasks -- bathing, eating, dressing, etc. The hope is that, by the end of treatment, he'll be able to care for himself independently and enjoy most, if not all, of his favorite hobbies and activities.

They were WONDERFUL with Dad. They started out with an assessment of his strength and utilization of left and right sides. This was consistent with previous tests -- left side strong, right side not so much. They said that he appears to have some muscle triggering on his right side, but can't feel it and can't move it.

They had him eat his breakfast and showed him how to use his right hand to stabalize and support his food and dishes, even though he can't really use it for the actual eating. That way, he can use his left hand for the primary functions. He did awesome! I can't imagine how difficult it is to use your non-dominant hand for things like eating. But he is doing awesome. It is hard for us to watch him do it because we want to help him, but we understand it is important for him to do it on his own, even if it's a little slow going at first.

After eating, Chelsie put four playing cards down on the table (2, 4, 6, and 8) and asked him to put them in order from low to high. I was pretty skeptical, because he hasn't been able to demonstrate that he understands letters and/or numbers yet. He moved them on the table and looked at them for a while and then slooooowly moved them in the right order. We were so excited!

Chelsie wanted to practice getting dressed, but we ran out of time. She said she'd do that with him during his afternoon session.

Physical Therapy with Collin
So, my family is sick of hearing how much I LOVED Collin. He was so wonderful. So natural and kind with Dad. He was funny and talked to Dad like an adult (which seems to be hard for some of the staff). He explained the goals of physical therapy (pretty obvious -- to improve Dad's strength and use of his right side, and to reteach him to walk, climb stairs, etc). He asked Dad if he wanted to try getting in a wheelchair and Dad said, "Yes!" He had not been out of his bed for almost a week. Collin and an aide got Dad into a wheelchair quickly and efficiently. They were impressed with Dad's balance and said that he even helped quite a bit with getting into the chair -- this was unexpected and a great sign.

When Dad was in the wheelchair, we went for a ride around the floor. Sharon was right -- it's sort of like a nursing home. We went to the common room and watched the big screen TV. There was a door out to the patio, but it was snowing. The snow must have set off the motion sensor on the door because the doors kept opening and shutting constantly. This annoyed Dad greatly, so we left. LOL  We went walking around the floor again, where he became annoyed with me because I kept running into things. In our defense, though, we were pushing a wheelchair around a narrow hallway and dragging his IV pole and oxygen tank with us. He kept shaking his head when I'd bump into things. LOL I told you I'm a hopeless nurse...

Anyway, when we got back to the room, he'd been in the chair about 45 minutes. We assumed he'd want to get back into bed to rest, but he wanted to chill in the chair. We sat him in front of the TV, right next to the window so he could see out, and he watched Good Day Utah and relaxed. It was so good to see him sitting up and relaxing. After a while, he motioned that he needed something and it only took a couple of guesses for Sharon to realize he wanted a blanket. Score for Sharon!

Sharon left at that point and I sat down to talk to Dad. We did Facebook on the iPad and I read him the blog comments. He laughed at several of the comments -- he likes the funny ones. Keep it up!  Afterward, I opened the notepad on the iPad and typed his name to see if he could read it. He said he could and pointed to himself. Another huge accomplishment!

He is still pretty hard to understand. But he's consistent with yes, no, okay, and sure, which is very helpful. He also nods and shakes his head consistently. But when he talks, he still sounds like he's speaking Cherokee. I told him that today and he laughed. I showed him the movies on the iPad and told him to think about any more he might like. I told him we should get Dances With Wolves and he wouldn't even need subtitles because he now speaks the language. He laughed again. He's got a good sense of humor about the situation most of the time.

The rehab unit at the hospital appears to be wonderful. The staff are all amazing. I just hope we get him a single room soon. That will make it pretty perfect.

Ryan can update on the afternoon's activities, which I'm sure were very busy. I asked Dad if he was looking forward to therapy and he said yes. He knows that working hard is going to be his quickest ticket to getting out and his best bet at the best recovery possible.

Thank you for your continued support and prayers. We love you all and appreciate your offers to help and especially your encouraging messages to Dad.