Paul's Update - 04/19/07

Dear Friends:

Today was another busy day for Paul. His physical therapy session started at 9:30am. Paul did much better today. Cathy (the therapist) was encouraged. She told Dad that her "goal" is to get Paul to be able to be more independent in his sitting, standing & walking so that if either I or Dora need to manage him ... we can! Right now Dad still uses most of his strength to pull Paul from a sitting to a standing position before allowing Paul to walk with the walker. He does the reverse when Paul needs to sit back in the recliner. Cathy also wants Paul to work on his posture. All the laying and sitting in bed has caused him to have poor posture. His pelvis is curved inward and she wants him to strengthen his lower back muscles to improve this. She wants him to sit in the custom wheelchair that we have for a few hours each day. This will encourage him to sit up straighter. She plans to show Dora some exercises that Paul can do in the bed. Paul did the exercise cycle again today. Cathy wanted him to work for five minutes on it. He did really good with it. The cycle has handle bars the adjust for each patient. There is a knob that loosens to pull them toward the patient and then you tighten the knob to keep them in place. When he was done she asked him to turn the knob to loosen the handle bars. He reached down and began to turn the knob and she said "your going the wrong way" but Dad looked down and said "no he isn't!" He was doing it right and as soon as it was loosened he stopped. When he had loosened it enough she said "that's good" and he stopped. Then he took his hand and pushed the handle bars in. He seems to understand basic mechanical skills! Cathy encourages him to put the brakes on and off for his wheelchair also. He is getting the hang of it! After he finished with the cycle they worked on a table to raise and lower his buttocks, this is the pelvic/lower back exercise. The she had him raise his knees and rock his legs from sided to side. When he'd done this several times she had him sit on the edge of the table. She showed him how to bring his hips forward to stand correctly. After he was standing Dad brought the walker to him so he could do some walking. Cathy asked if the wheelchair was far enough away or did he want it to be farther. He said farther so Dad backed the chair away until Paul made a sound to stop. He walked from the table to the wheelchair...about 35 feet. Cathy walked beside him and encouraged Dad to not walk behind. She would like him to become only about 25 percent dependent on others to do his walking!! She gave her initial diagnoses of what she feels Paul needs to work on and then talked to Dad about how she plans to work with him to achieve this level of independence. When they were on the way out of the office there was a child in the waiting room with a stuffed bear. The nurse asked "is that your teddy bear?" She nodded and showed it to the nurse. It growled and the nurse looked at Paul and asked "did you see the teddy bear?" He looked over and heard it growl and he got the biggest smile on his face. The nurse was so surprised to see him smile. She asked "now where was that hiding"? She told Paul that he has a beautiful smile and hopes to see more of it!! I love when he smiles ... it is a sign that he has emotions and we get very little of that kind of response!! After therapy Paul had lunch and then watched TV with Dora while Dad worked with Uncle Jimmy in the garage. Dad was able to put some of Paul's things that were in the garage up in the loft today. When he opened one of the boxes that had come from Paul's work he found two movies that Paul had gotten from Uncle Jimmy just before the accident. He hadn't even had time to bring them home yet!! We got a package from UPS this morning. I had ordered a new glider for the deck that came today. Dad plans to have Paul help him sometime in the next few days putting that together!! Tonight for dinner I asked Paul if he wanted Milk or juice to drink. He nodded so I said again "do you want milk or juice?". He held up two fingers. I said "no...you need to say...do you want milk or juice?" This time he held up two fingers and said "two"! Again I told him you need to say MILK or JUICE. This time he said "juice". It was choice number two! It's funny how hard he tried to avoid having to SAY it!! Tonight Paul talked to Bobby on the phone. He said "hello" and Paul answered back "hello". Then Bobby asked him something and Paul said "not much". Paul said "cool" a couple of times and also said "ok" a couple of times before saying "bye" and giving the phone back to Dad. Bobby enjoyed his conversation. He said it was obvious to him that Paul was searching for the words to say but he responded pretty quickly. Billy came by this evening too and had a nice conversation with Paul. He enjoys the interaction with the boys especially!! After dinner I worked with Paul to do some speech exercises. He worked with a picture book identifying what I asked him to show me. He was able to identify the football, baseball and basketball without any trouble. But when he had the swing set, see-saw, and slide he had a bit more trouble with them. We also did a couple of wood puzzles. One had tools on it ... he got them all right!! The other one was numbers 0-9 and he had to find the number to put in the puzzle and also count the pictures that correspond to the number. He struggled a bit but was able to put the puzzle together. After we finished I had to leave for choir practice but we had promised Paul that afterwards we could go out to Denny's with Bill & Ronda. We went over and had coffee and dessert. Paul saw a couple of ladies come in and head to the bathroom. They had to pass right by him and he looked over and watched them go by. I guess they were interesting to him!! We got home pretty late (10:30pm) so it was time for bed. All in all ... a pretty good day!

Love & Hugs (TGIF) Lynne & Carl