Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Christy had another very good day all the way around. All therapy went very well this morning and the Doc's at Craig are feeling very good about where Christy is at compared to the way she arrived. It has been one hell of a ride for Christy and she is taking the challenge on with a great attitude allowing her the successes she has accomplished up to this point.

Today started just as most days have recently with OT. Christy works on all independent behaviors during the first session of OT. She gets herself ready and she did a better job than even yesterday. Not saying she did bad yesterday, but she was even faster this morning. Next, we were off to some weight training for PT.

PT was cool this morning. Taking a look at the pictures you'll see that the entire hour was spent down in the weight room. She started on the elliptical machine and spent five minutes working on her stride length. Her left leg is lagging a little on her walking, but it is progressively getting better. Prior to today, she had never spent that long on the machine without being totally exhausted by it. She barely broke a sweat and that machine this morning. She also did some machine bench press and some low pulley rows to work on evening out her posture as she is still favoring her right shoulder, the one that she broke. All of the workouts focus on range of motion and flexibility and Christy is getting better with the both of them.

We ate lunch and took a short break following the morning session. Christy was able to sleep for a little over an hour while Donald and I ran to the store.

Following Christy's break, she had additional OT that focused on crafts. As you see in the pictures, Christy was outside trimming flowers for a pressed flower stationary that they were going to develop. It was going for her fine motor skills because she had to use both hands to cut the flowers and then trim them before being pressed. It was a bit of a challenge for her, but she did very well with it.

Her final session of the day was with Melea, the speech therapist. Christy spent an hour with her this afternoon working on some tests to measure where Christy is at in comparison to when she arrived. Christy did an outstanding job with the exercises. One of the most obvious areas of measurement was this exercise where Christy had three (3) one minute periods to name foods, first names and animals. When Christy arrived she could only name 4 foods in a minute, she was able to name 19 today. When arriving at Craig, Christy could only name seven people by first name. Today she named 25 in one minute. She also increased the number of animals she was able to name in the minute by four animals. She was pretty much perfect on the rest of the exams. I even answered some of the questions wrong as I was following along in my head.

We rested in the afternoon and then went to dinner with some really good friends to Christy and Donald. The Salazars are from Denver and Donald works with their niece. They have been very good to Christy and Donald making it a lot easier fo them to be away from family. They are awesome people that we are very thankful and blessed to have gotten to know. We ate Mexican food and Christy did very well at dinner tonight. The Salazars are definitely a family we plan to keep in touch with as well and we look forward to coming back to Denver for a BBQ at their house.

Sorry, a little shorter than last night, but I have to catch a flight early in the morning tomorrow. Christy and Donald will be arriving Friday. We are not sure what time they will be getting home yet, but we should be able to post it on the blog by tomorrow night. A BBQ is being planned for Sonny and Lorene's house Saturday night. More details to follow.

Good night!