- Joined
- Nov 7, 2004
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- Location
- Sun Lakes & Show Low, Arizona
- First Name
- Brian
After a week in rehab she has made a lot of improvement. Speech is the slowest to improve, but progress is being made. She has walked on a walker with two therapists on her sides over 100 feet in one session.
She is now on solid foods but still on thickened liquids until we can get another barium swallow test for her.
She wants to go home NOW! but I'm guessing another 2-3 weeks. We should get an updated prognosis tomorrow afternoon. And then when we get home it is unknown how long it will take her to get back to a semblance of "normal". We'll just play the hand we were dealt and do the best we can.
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Weekly update:
She walked 444 feet this morning with just a single therapist next to her for safety purposes.
She is talking in complete sentences "most of the time", and is recognizing (usually) when she mis-speaks but the communication skills are going to take a while to completely recover.
I've been trained on how to transition her from the bed to the walker and back; how to get her to the toilet and back; and how to help her shower. All things that makes her more comfortable instead of having a stranger help her with those things.
In a dexterity test two weeks ago she had to hold a golf ball in her hand, hold it high, drop it, let the ball bounce once and then try to catch it underhanded. She managed to do so about 3 times out of 25 tries. Yesterday they increased it to two bounces before trying to catch it and she was successful 15 out of 20 attempts.
She also stood yesterday with no walker or other support and threw darts.
Today she stood up from bed, walked a couple of steps without any support and transitioned to her wheelchair. She was scared to death, but the therapist was there the entire time in case she started to fall.
Her grip strength in the stroke hand has improved from 23 pounds two weeks ago to 45 pounds today.
She passed the Swallow Test this morning and has been upgraded to the full Cardiac diet and ALL liquids. No more thickened water to drink!
The rehab staff meets tomorrow to discuss her length of stay. Last Friday it was for 3 weeks, so we're hoping that tomorrow they will move it to one week and then move her to intensive outpatient therapy instead of staying here at the Rehab Center.
We've got Skype set up and she's used that to talk with her son and one of her sisters, and she talks on the phone to two of her sisters, one of her brothers, her son, her mom, and my mom. As long as she keeps her speech rate slowed down a little she is pretty easy to understand but this issue will probably be the longest lasting handicap.
So all in all, good progress on all points and we hope to be going home within 10-14 days.
Some of you have posted positive comments on her Caring Bridge site and while she may not read all of them you can be assured that I do, and I appreciate everything written there and here. Thank you.