For Now

I am going to give a run-down on how things stand, and then I'll probably wait to post again until Monday after the cardiology appointment.

DAVID CAN WIGGLE HIS TOES!!

This morning David was really aware of how much better he is doing this week than last week - can really tell the difference as he does his therapy.

He's making GREAT progress, but he cannot yet fully perform that most essential of life skills: card shuffling. He's also still "wired" funny. When he yawns his left foot involuntarily flexes really hard.

The plan is for him to remain in English Oaks until November 29.

It's hard for him and for us to have him away from home, but he is getting GREAT physical therapy there, and we know the early days and weeks after a stroke are so important in terms of what he will regain. Miraculously, our insurance has agreed to allow David to continue to go to English Oaks for his outpatient therapy for 3 further week after he is discharged. Apparently this request is almost NEVER granted, because our insurance does not contract with English Oaks for that. Thank you for prayers regarding this. They have been answered! This ensures him continuity of care and the high quality care he's been getting all along. YEA!!

We are learning so many different things through this experience. Yesterday, while we had David out for Thanksgiving, we took him for a walk, and we just about dumped him out of the wheelchair twice! (Sorry Dave!) There are some lovely sloped curbs that had recently been put in on the street corners to make them more accessible. We thought we could just roll up them head-on. We learned pretty quickly that even the little bump that is there can cause trouble and that we had to back David up over those. We became really alert to our path, because some sides of the street had sidewalks and some did not, some had sloped curbs and some did not, some had bushes growing out very far over the sidewalk. Our eyes are just a little more open now to lots of things.

David loved getting to be outside - even if it was a precarious adventure! The walk was great, and we ended up laughing almost the whole way. Caleb was a particularly scary driver (all the boys wanted a turn pushing Dad), and we've decided Caleb needs to go to wheelchair driver's training before he gets another turn or David will end up with more to recover from than a stroke!

How wonderfully fitting that the first time David was able to be back in church and out with extended family was on Thanksgiving Day!! It was a particularly beautiful service. Afterwards we were able to have dinner with extended family at my grandfather's house.

Dad brought to our attention an article about stroke from a recent Business Week magazine that reminded us again of how everything that has needed to go right for us in this whole situation has gone right. (I'm thinking now especially of David being in ER in time to get tPA.) I'll close with that and report in on the cardiology appointment Monday.

. . . stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability, costing the US $63 billion each year. Despite this huge disease burden there is only one stroke drug available, Genentech's tPA, approved in 1987. TPA is effective, however, only if given within three hours of the event; just 5% of stroke victims make it to the hospital on time . . . . It can take emergency room doctors n hour or more to figure out which type of stroke it is [hemorrhagic or ischemic] before they can administer tPA, which works only for ischemic strokes. All the while, 2 million brain cells are dying every minute that the brain is deprived of oxygen.