Physical therapy was intense with all of its exercises and stretches. Chrsity did a bunch of new exercises with the ball to strengthen her core and legs! This picture on the left shows Cathi and Carly with Christy at PT. Jody is there in the right hand lower corner, too! Christy is working on stretching here, and the girls are helping out!
The picture on the right is Chrsity doing a bridge exercise holding a ball between her legs!! Wow!! Christy is using her core, her hamstrings and gluteus (butt) muscles to lift her body and keep her legs together!! Impressive, Christy! Christy is getting stronger and stronger every day! Sit up core exercises were part of the regime today as well. You see Christy with the ball in her hands doing a sit up!!! Wow!! Strengthening the core muscles will help with her balance while walking and sitting up, etc!
More work was done in PT with walking with the shopping cart (you've seen pictures of that before). Christy did something new and worked on walking up and down stairs with PT today! Christy has an easy time going up the stairs, but had a more difficult time going down. I know its easier for me to go up than down. Especially when I'm carrying something and my vision is obstructed. With Christy's weakened vision, it is a little more scary stepping down the stairs, not sure if the footing will be perfect. She did wonderfully with this new exercise!
Donald put the feet rests back on Christy's wheelchair to encourage Chrsity to move herself in her chair with her hands. This will help strengthen her upper body and arms, especially her right side.
Speech went smoothly. More work on tongue strengthening.
Chrsity's regular OT therapist was out today. She's away. Christy had a new therapist Jannine. During one of the OT sessions, they went down to therapeutic recreation. This is the same place that Christy painted at before. There were about 4 therapist there at the session and a couple other patients. The task at hand was to make "fruit pizzas". They had sugar cookies that they spread cream cheese on. There were other patients who could cut up the toppings: kiwis, strawberries, blueberries, etc. Christy had to put the different fruits on the cookie for them to eat! She had to work on vision, hand-eye coordination, color recognition, motor movements, etc. during this exercise. Christy and Don had fund doing this project!
Chrsity had started a project with ceramics earlier during her stay. She had chosen which ceramic she wanted to do, so she had it while the kids were here. Christy picked a ceramic NEMO! Today she got to paint it.
Christy had standing frame with Dan today, as well!! Christy did very well with standing up strait!
Christy and Don talked to Dr. Ripley today about getting some steroid shots in her shoulder. The steroid shots will help ease her pain and help gain more range of motion. If Christy doesn't get the shots the work she needs to do to rehab the shoulder will be very difficult and uncomfortable. Originally, Christy didn't want to have to get poked with the needle, so she wasn't interested in the steroid shots. Today Christy agreed to try them out. She'll get relief and be able to do more in therapy. She gets her first shot tomorrow at 10:00am.
Christy is still working on eating enough calories to maintain her baseline weight and to get the PEG tube out forever! Christy has been receiving an ensure shake in the morning to supplement her breakfast. The Ensure has vitamins and minerals, calories, etc. for Chrsity's optimal healing. Christy gets an AM Ensure because she's not really a breakfast eater. They decided that they are going to try and give as little as possible through the PEG to wean her off PEG use now. Christy will be taking all of her pills by mouth now. This will get us closer to getting out the PEG. The set back is the nausea from the medication to control her motor movements. Christy barfed up her dinner tonight. She just gets sick as a side effect of the medication. junk.
Until tomorrow!
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