Monday, May 25, 2009

Hi gang! It's gabby.  Wanted to let you know that the blog will no longer be daily, but here and there!  Christy is doing wonderfully and is slowly adjusting to the heat!!  She's been having quite a few social activities going as everyone is ultra excited to have her home.  The Lopes were kind enough to host a family gathering at their home/Kamehameha dorms today!  The family was in full effect and Christy was delighted to talk stories with everyone!  Christy is walking fabulously and enjoying being with family again.  She was ono for some Haupia Pie, so Tori was happily able to pick one up on her way to the gathering!  

Christy has been an inspiration to us all on a daily basis.  We thank God for giving us Christy back constantly.  And how lucky I feel to be a part of such a wonderful family who has stayed strong in love during this entire journey.  It's always been about Christy and banding together to help where we can.  I guess our love for one another has inspired others who didn't know Christy.  People have been watching her story on KITV 4 (Christy even stars in their commercial!) and reading the blog.  If you've been reading the blog, I asked if anyone could help Brenda Inouye sell some candies.  Brenda got an email from Stepanie DeCambra offering to help her sell.  During a conversation Brenda asked Stephanie if she knew Chrsity, and she said she just started reading the blog, felt the love, and wanted to help!!  Turns out Stephanie helped sell 3 1/2 cases of candies!!  Can you believe that!! Wow!  So we wanted to say thank you to Stephanie for reaching out and giving a hand.  

Take care all of you out there and I'll be in periodically to give an update!  XoxO, gabby

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Chirsty and Donald will be home tomorrow at 252 pm. All those free at that time, please join us at the airport to welcome Christy home.

Also, the Saturday night BBQ has been cancelled. I am sure something else will be set up once Christy has had some time to relax and spend time with the kids. Stay tuned.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

It is going to be very brief this evening. Donald and I mostly discussed the nightmare he dealt with getting the flight arrangements made. Medicaid people were jacked up, but that is another story for another blog.

Anyhow, we have great news. Christy and Donald will be arriving home at 252pm on Friday May 22nd on United airlines. If interested, I think the best place to greet them would be at the baggage claim since no one can go to the gate. Also, there will be a get together Saturday night and Lorene and Sonny's house to welcome Christy home. Don't know the details at this time, stay tuned as I will try to make sure that I add it to a later blog post.

Christy missed a lot of her rehab stuff today because they had another appointment with the eye doctor. It was another assessment that they wanted to squeeze in before she came home to see where her vision has improved. Other than that, Don did not give me much detail. I know for a fact most of today and all of tomorrow is going to be spent packing.

Christy and Donald are super excited to be coming home. A lot of people who have not seen Christy in a couple of months will be very happy and surprised to see how far she has come. A warning here, make sure you bring some tissue because it is enough to make even the toughest persons break down.

That's all for now. I will try to get more details posted tomorrow night. If you can make it, please join us on Friday at the airport. Christy will be very happy to see everyone there.

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!

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.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Today was an average day for Christy in her rehab. Sorry, but there are not going to be any photos for today because Donald felt like slacking. Just kidding, just no photos. Slight delay in this post as both Gabby and I were traveling Friday and we were out all day Saturday when I arrived here in Denver. Christy wanted to go shopping.

She had a normal day with PT and OT today. She did work with a different speech therapist today who tried something new with Christy. Not sure why, but Melea was not with her today. Anyway, the new speech therapy program is a computer program that shows a mouth pronouncing and sounding out words/phrases. Christy has to see the words/phrases stated and then she repeats them back to the therapist. It is an attempt to train her muscle memory for all of the muscles in her mouth. She also sings the songs that she hears on the programs helping her speech to get stronger.

PT was normal stretching and walking against ballerina bars. Nothing out of the ordinary for the work this morning. The second session of OT was interesting as they spent time with the UNO cards today. Basically, she organized and arranged all of the colors with like colors. Donald also worked with her in arranging the cards in numerical order. It worked on her vision in being able to recognize the colors and numbers. Also, putting the numbers in order and organizing them by color was a workout for her memory. She did very well with the UNO cards this afternoon according to Donald.

You will be receiving the posts live and in color from Denver this week. I will be here until Wednesday reporting for Gabby. She was sent to a nursing conference in New Orleans, so she was unable to come back to Denver. Anyhow, Christy only has a little more than a week left here and then she will be back with the family and friends back home. We can't wait until she comes home.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Christy got to sleep in today to 9:00 am because there was no early Occupational Therapy session.  Her first session was Physical therapy with Jody.  Jody decided to take Christy down to the basement to do some work in the wellness center.  Remember that's the gym where Don runs and exercises.    Jody led Christy through some new types of exercises that will help with her balance and leg range of motion.  You can see Christy on the elliptical machine (picture on the right).  She rode it on speed one for 3 minutes.  Christy did a wonderful job!  This exercise is so beneficial to Chrsity because it targets her weak spots.  She is able to get more range of motion and stretch and extend her hips.  Her arms can bend and stretch while going through the movement with her legs.  It's a total body work out.   Jody also put her on the vertical bench machine to work her back muscles.  She worked her latisimus dorsi or "wings"  on another machine too.  Like a lateral pull down machine.  For OT Casey stretched and massaged the right shoulder blade out.   Don usually stays out of the room for speech therapy, so he won't be a distraction.  Today, Malea and Chrsity came out and showed him a picture where Chris had to connect the dots.  Melea said that this was the best that Chrsity has ever done on this exercise and her vision and coordination while using the pen is awesome!

After lunch Chrsity had a combo class with Casey and Melea.  This was a fun class because it was an opportunity to make Chocolate pudding!!  The therapist read the recipe to Chrsity and when they were done, she had to remember as much of the ingredients and instructions were.  The recipe said to mix two cups of milk with the pre-packaged powder mix.  The therapist asked Christy what she needed, and Christy replied:  

1. a bowl to mix the ingredients  

2. a mixing spoon  

3. a measuring cup  

Once she had all of her tools, they asked her to then pour out the milk and to mix it herself.  She did such a wonderful job at this complicated task!