Friday, April 24, 2009

In today's Physical therapy session Christy did some walking!  She's walking here with the shopping cart and using it as support.  Someone else was using the regular walker that you've seen in previous posts.  Christy is getting stronger and stronger every day.  

Christy also stood at the ballerina bars today-- not strapped in.  She can stand with her legs so strait now.  And she can stand and straiten in just three seconds!! Look how perfectly strait she's got her legs! That's so much faster and

 straighter than before!  It's wonderful.  Those extra sessions at the standing frame with Dan are paying off! Go Chris!

All of Christy's therapist are happy and impressed by her hard work and progress.  Maela saw Christy three times today!  This is a picture of Christy at Speech therapy looking at  her mouth when she pronounciates.  Malea was doing an exercise with her that allows her to say the whole 

alphabet and say each letter's sound.  Fore example.  Christy has to say... "A", "ahh", "B", "buh", "C", "kuh", "D", "duh"... and so on.  They are also working on slapping the leg with each syllable of the word to pronounciate it better.  This exercise is working well.  Malea commented that Christy is doing so much better with her tongue this week.  I can't help but think that it is because she is 

on the higher dose of Carbadopa-Levodopa (that Parkinson's drug we talked about previously).   Don is noticing that when Christy talks on the phone, she doesn't have to hand the phone over to him so he can talk and explain.  Christy's speech is much clearer and talking on the phone is less of a challenge!  Chris is still working on her chewing!   Malea printed out some tongue exercises for Don to work on with Chris on their free time or on the weekends while not in classes.  

Dr. Shraa worked with Christy today.  Christy's memory is still getting better! He did some memory games like saying a whole bunch of words... 20, I think.  Christy has to name back as many as possible.  She was getting about 5 words, all right, repeated back to Dr. Shraa.  Then

 they would sit back and talk story a little.  After talking for a while, he asked Christy if she remembered any of the words they talked about earlier.  Christy remembered about 4 words again! yay! Pretty impressive!

Occupational therapy did something new today!  They started

 Christy on this machine that has three pillars in the shape of a triangle.  I have a couple pictures here to help with figuring out what this "game" looks like.  Christy has to hit the lighted area with whatever "weapon" she has.   They just worked one of the three pillars today.  Christy had a little bit of a hard time to begin with, but by the end she was hitting like a champ!  She got to LEVEL 5 which is great! Christy has to search for the light on a three-dimensional object and coordinate her tool to hit the right spot to move the light.  It's like a huge light board with different planes.  It's probably stress relieving, too! It makes me think about that game they use to have at Fun Factory where you whack the alligators that come out of their caves.... anyway...

Family services has been so incredibly helpful and "on it" at Craig.  Melissa makes sure she addresses problems with the insurance right away so Don doesn't have to worry about it.  Don will go in front of Craig's Board of Directors to discuss Christy's care and his satisfaction with the Hospital.  They do this with family's at Craig about once every year and a half.  

Keep the prayers going... they work every day at Craig.  Christy is making a wonderful recovery and we're so happy.  XOXOX