Paul's Update - 02/28/08

Dear Friends:

It is amazing how fast our weeks go by. Most of our days seem pretty much the same however Paul continues to improve. Tuesday the 19th was a therapy day. The Occupational therapist was not in and cancelled Paul’s session. He went to Physical Therapy at 1pm. Paul worked on walking. He also did his knee bends and working with the bar. Wednesday was a quiet day. Thursday the Occupational therapist was back. They arrived at the hospital at 9:30. They started out with working on finding the middle of a line. She would draw a line and he had to draw across the line to the middle. She worked on having him hold a pencil and draw things. He really doesn’t like doing that but she helps get him started and he actually does OK. Then she got out some “snap-beads” and had he put them together. He seemed to enjoy doing that. He started by using both hands to snap them together, then started holding both pieces in one hand to snap them together. She has a piece of cloth that has buttons, zippers, safety pins and eye hooks on it. She had undo the buttons which he also enjoys doing with one hand. Then she had him undo the small safety pins that are attached to the cloth. Paul was able to undo them with one hand, pull them out and then put them on the table. After he got them out he had to put them back. He had to stick the pin into the cloth and hook it. He seems to do very well with small tasks! Thursday night was bible study. Ronda brought Shepherd’s Pie … YUM! Paul usually eats pretty slow but he really enjoyed dinner! Friday we didn’t have a nurse since the weather was forecasted to be icy. Dad had Paul get down on the floor and crawl down the hallway to his bedroom. This is the first time that Paul was willing to do this exercise. It was slow going at first but once he got started he did really well. Once he got to his bedroom he used the side of the bed to stand back up. He walked back to the living room and did some work on the floor. They did leg lifts and tummy crunches. Dad is trying to work out some of the muscle stiffness that is making it hard for Paul to walk normally. Of course we were able to go out to dinner Friday night. The weather was really just a false alarm and we only got rain. We went to Yorkshire Restaurant (only a mile from home) and had a great dinner. Saturday we were not able to go out for Mexican. Dad & Paul had an appointment to be fitted for Tuxedos that they will wear in Bobby’s wedding. The wedding is just a little over a month away!! We went out to dinner at the Chinese Restaurant instead of Mexican. Mayah went home a little early since we were going out. Sunday we celebrated the Baptism of Liam Ford, Alicia & Lee’s baby! We went to their church in Gainesville which is about a 30 minute drive. Mayah went with us. We had Max with us and he stayed with us during the service. He did really good. Chris and Alysa were with us also since Carolyn is the Godmother. Chris was chatty during the service but what a joy to hear a happy baby in church! After the service we went to Mary Lou’s house for a reception. Max & Chris were able to play together. It is so fun watching them play. They are really good together! We didn’t get home until after 4pm. After dinner I was in my office and Paul decided he wanted to come in and visit with me. We worked a little on names. I asked him what my name and prompted him with “Ly” and he said Lynne. So I proceeded to ask him all of the family names. He was able to say Carl, Lynne, Bob, Carolyn, Max & Tabitha with just a little prompting. The interesting thing is that we always call Tabitha “Tabby” but when you ask him what his wife’s name is ... he ALWAYS says “Tabitha”!! Mayah was fascinated that Paul wanted to spend time in my office. We were in there until after Mayah left at 10 pm. He decided to stay late to make up some of the time he lost last weekend when his Aunt died. Monday was a quiet day at home. Dad worked on Paul’s exercises. We met with Kristin from Brain Injury Services that evening. She is very helpful in getting information related to resources like therapy, Medicare & seminars for caregivers. Tuesday Paul had PT at 1pm. She had Paul show her his tummy crunches and leg extensions. She wanted to see him do them since he doesn’t do that kind of exercise with her. Dad had him roll over on his stomach and do leg lifts. He HATES being on his stomach but he did it! They went out to the hallway and had Paul walk holding onto the rail with his right hand. He actually does better holding the rail with the right hand since he tends to grab the railing more tightly with his left hand. He doesn’t have the strength in his right hand so that hand just slides along while he walks. They didn’t have Occupational therapy on Tuesday again this week. Wednesday Paul stayed home and had a quiet day. Today was Occupational therapy 9:30am. What an amazing day! Just when we think Paul is doing only mundane things … he does something amazing. The therapist took a deck of cards and asked Paul if he could arrange them in order from low to high. He said “yes” so she laid the cards “2, 3 & 4” on the table. She asked him “which is the lowest card?”. He pointed to the “2”. She moved the “2” over and then he moved the 3 & 4 into order. Then she put the “5, 6 & 7” on the table. He picked up the “5” card. The therapist asked “What card do you have?” and Paul said “five”. He put the cards in the right order behind the 2, 3 & 4. She laid the rest of the cards on the table. The first two were “9 & 10”. Paul picked them up and put them next to the “7”. Then he picked up the “8” and looked over at the other cards. Instead of putting the card at the end of the line, he reached over and slid the “7” in between the “6 & 8”!! He finished by putting down the Jack, Queen, King and Ace in the right order!! Dad was just flabbergasted!! Only a few months ago Paul wouldn’t even acknowledge that he knew what numbers the cards were … but now he seems to recognize them and can put them in order!!! There was only about 20 minutes with the Physical Therapist since Paul had to see the Physiatrist (Physical Therapy Specialist). She hasn’t seen him for a while. The therapist keeps recommending that we put Paul on a mild muscle relaxer to help with the tone in his muscles. The specialist agreed that a low dose of a muscle relaxer is worth a try. She prescribed the medicine that Paul took once before. When he was at Mount Vernon Rehab Hospital he took this medicine and it relaxed him so much that we couldn’t get him to do ANYTHING! He was also just beginning to recover from the injury and not very responsive even without any medicines. We are hopeful that now he will tolerate the medicine better and it may actually help. We will watch him VERY closely and if it causes him to digress we will stop giving it to him. We had bible study tonight. After Bill & Ronda left Paul was pretty tired and ready to go to bed about 10:30. He’d had a pretty busy day!