More rehab

Randy had another great day in rehab. He is really working hard. He keeps telling us his goal is to go home and he is working hard to get there!

In physical therapy today he practiced more walking. She had him walk with me to see how we did together. He is getting more and more steady on his feet ~ just has occassional wobbles. She cleared me to take him on short walks so whenever he needs to go to the bathroom he gets to walk there now. The picture is of him and one of his physical therapists practicing standing up. There are times he is still a but unstead with standing and he tries to use his right leg a little too much to overcompensate for the weaker left leg. But he is really working on it because he understands that by using the left leg, it will make it stronger. He just needs to remind himself sometimes.

With occupational therapy, she had him work on puzzles ~ he had a bucket full of different colors and shapes. She gave him a pattern and he had to put together the pattern. He did quite well with the puzzle part, but she added the twist of having him do it standing up and she put the bucket on his right side and a little behind him so he had to turn to the right and grab them, making him using his left arm to balance himself. They are really working on that left arm, which is good. It is getting better everday. She also put this thing on his arm which made him stretch is out straight. It was kind of a cool device ~ it looked like a plastic bag that zipped up, but you zip the arm up in it and then you blow air into it and it tightens around the arm. She also worked on having him practice getting in and out of the bathtub and on and off the toilet. She tried a couple of different avenues with the tub so that I could know what modifications need to be done to the bathtub. It looks like Randy will do well with just a couple of grab bars to help him stabalize and then a chair for him to sit on inside the tub. Then there are things that can be bought for the toilet that can just be screwed on, so we won't have to do a permanent one and it is something that can be taken with us if we go stay somewhere.

In speech class, one of the therapists (he has 2 different speech therapists, meeting with each one once a day), had given him an assignment yesterday to ask the other therapist today what type of pets they had and Randy did great in doing the task. They had given him a planner a couple of days ago and he wrote the assignment in his to do list section. Then this morning, when reviewing his to do list, he saw the assignment again and wrote a note on the daily therapy schedule they give him. So he was aware he wouldn't remember and found a way to remind himself. It was great. That therapist gave him another assignement today. This one was to call and leave her a voicemail with what he ate for dinner. His mom ended up reminding him of that one on accident, but other than the little reminder, he did great at completing that one as well. She also had him list as many things as he could in a given category within the time limit of one minute. She gave him the category of "Things you grow in your garden". As soon as she gave the category, I could see his mind working ~ you could tell he was seeing in his mind, his garden and where everything was planted and as he moved through it in his mind, he named the various things.

The other speech therapist asked him to name 5 things in different categories. He could think of 3 or 4 things, but struggled with the last 1 or 2, but he could think of descriptions of them. For example, when given the task of naming 5 holidays, he thought of "Turkey Day" as his clue for himself for Thanksgiving, he thought of fireworks which lead him to Independence Day, and for New Year's, he thought of the song that is sang on the eve "Auld Lang Syne". The therapist commented that it was great to see Randy has such a great sense of humor through all that he is going through. She was talking about how it is typical that people don't remember events from a timeframe before the accident and after the accident, and Randy joked about how he didn't necessarily want to remember things from before and he has joked about not having a memory before anyway.

Tonight, he was so funny ~ his mom commented how it must be easier on the cooks to make the same things throughout the month (they have a Sunday through Saturday schedule with different things for each day, but then they start it over on Sunday) and Randy said "Yeah, it's not like we remember anyway".

Medically, Randy is doing well. They have moved him twice already since we got here, but we should now be staying in the same room for the rest of the time ~ we are in room 32, the very last room, right past the eating area. It is the only private room they have, so it is rather nice. They said Randy had C-diff (which is that bacteria that he had a couple of times at Harborview) so they put him in isolation. The infectious disease doctor just came in tonight and said that he doesn't believe Randy is contagious from that because he has no syptoms and he said the test they used wouldn't have given them accurate results. He also has something in his nose called MRSA. I guess it is something that is very typical for people for have ~ it is something that commonly colonizes on people. It can cause issues if it turns into an infection, which can happen with people with poor immune systems. With Randy it hasn't causes any infections, but because there are other people here with poor immune systems, he has to be in isolation the entire time he is here, which is fine with us ~ we love the room. It doesn't interfere with his rehab ~ it just means the therapists have to put these yellow gowns on to not get it on them and give it to another patient.

For those who have been emailing Randy ~ he has read all of the emails and he loves getting them. It might take him a bit to respond to them, but I want you all to know, he has read every single one of them!