Monday, May 18, 2009

First off, the big news of the day is that Christy and Donald will be coming home this Friday instead of next week Tuesday. They have moved the discharge day up due to the fact the there will be no rehab Friday, Saturday or Monday because it is a holiday. So, there is no use to stay until next week Tuesday since Christy will not be missing anything by coming home this Friday. Let me tell you, Christy is very excited to be coming home. She cannot wait to see her kids.

Next, just to catch you up over the weekend, we did not do much. We took Christy shopping on Saturday and she got some clothes that fit her better since she is down to a size 2 now. She is a little bummed about losing her booty, but we assured her she would get it back with time. We spent all day Sunday just cruising and hanging out. We watched some movies and all took naps. Very productive day if you ask me.

On to today's rehab. Christy started the day with OT which focused solely on her getting herself ready for the day. As you can see from the pictures, she is able to pretty much do everything on her own. She just needs a little help getting everything started and she is able to finish the job on her own. Donald also noticed that Christy began using her right hand to eat during breakfast this morning without being asked to. Up to this point, she has had a very difficult time using her right hand to eat. For some reason, she felt good today and switched back and forth between both hands when she was eating. Donald was very happy to see her using both hands.

Once Christy was done getting herself ready, we moved on to PT this morning which focused solely on stretching her out. As you can see in the picture, Christy continues to walk everywhere when she is in the hospital. I have known about her walking on her own for some time now, but to see it in person was another story. The pace and length of stride is almost a normal walk. She is still a little slow, but I could never tell just from looking at the pictures how much she has progressed with her walking. She has awesome balance also. If you notice, we just put our hand on her back and hold her by her bra to give her the confidence to move forward. She does all the work on her own with pretty much no assistance.

From there, we moved on to Speech therapy with Melea this morning right before we ate lunch. She worked on some of the normal things regarding her tongue and finding the pudding she was placing on her lip. Christy would have to find the pudding and lick it off with her tongue strengthening the muscles in her mouth and tongue. She went to see Dr. Shraa following the first speech therapy. Dr. Shraa did some memory exercises with her that he was very excited about. Dr. Shraa said that Christy did as well as anyone he could have pulled in off the street. He was very encouraged by her progress and so was Donald. I was not able to sit in on this one because Dr. Shraa did not want Christy to be too distracted by me being there.

We ate lunch and took a very short nap following lunch.

Christy went to her final class of the day, a second speech therapy session with Melea. It was trippy the way Christy can see things. Her vision is getting better, but it still needs some work. For example, she had to look at items without touching them and tell Melea what they were. She did really good with this part. The second part of the exercise is she has to pick the word of the item from three words laid out in front of her on pieces of paper. At first, all of the words were written in all caps and Christy said it was giving her a hard time. So, Melea re-wrote everything in small case and Christy had no issue seeing any of the letters. It is so trippy to see how her brain is progressing. Anyway, she performed very well again in the afternoon session of speech therapy.

She took another short nap following her final class. She finished the day with a treat. Donald got her her weekly massage therapy this afternoon and then we took her to Chili's for dinner. Chili's is where she wanted to go and we ended the day with some Cold Stone.

She is progressing very well and I further realize how well after seeing it in person for the first time. Damn it was impressive and I have no doubt that she is going to continue to progress because of the attitude she is maintaining. She is tough and takes everything head on. That attitude and Donald pushing her will allow a very thorough recovery. I would put money on it.