Lessons in Pictures

Today I spent time with David learning his PT routine and what we need to be aware of as he returns home. Here are a couple of pictures of his exercises:

David is particularly proud of the following exercise. He was talking today about when he first came to English Oaks this was absolutely impossible for him both because he could not balance at all and because he just could not get his brain to tell his body how to do this.

He's made such great progress, and being there today I now know why. When he doesn't do his exercises right, they beat him with a cane! ;-)

Speaking of canes, he has graduated to using one!

Here is David in what has been home for the 3 weeks since he left the hospital.

As I was walking the halls of English Oaks today I realized I will never visit a convalescent hospital again with the same vision I'd had in the past. It feels like home away from home. It has a whole different sense to it.

As well as getting a record of David's exercises in pictures, we gained information today about what the transition to home will be like. One of the other things we learned about was how to ensure safety at home for him to shower. We talked about other details such as driving. David was disappointed to learn it will be a while before he should try driving. He's not getting full feedback (proprioception) on his left side yet, and even though we have not seen any cognitive impairment the PT said that there probably is some impairment of higher order thinking, just because of what he's been through (in terms of the "trauma" of the situation, I guess), such as ability to realize a car is merging to his left while noticing what is happening ahead in traffic.

Along the same lines they just want him to adjust to being home again before he took on any other "big" things - stating that we should all expect that to be a hard adjustment. We will have lived apart for 4 weeks when he comes home, and he is coming home in a different condition than he was in on November 1. Family life has gone on and found a new normal. David's life has been totally removed from home and very focused on his health and recovery in an environment geared only for that. The PT's said that everyone they see after the fact has told them how hard it is to adjust to going home, so, while we're VERY excited that he's coming home, David and I have both been put on alert that it is probably going to be a hard adjustment. They said it will mostly be in the little things.

We had a small taste of that a few days ago when David was out on a pass for a while and spent some time at home. He wanted to oversee the online banking but could not get his left hand to work on the keyboard. That and some other computer related things that used to work so naturally and now do not became very frustrating for him. So I can see how having been in a specialized environment for so long where he has certain expectations of himself and then shifting to home where he has always been healthy and totally able will be frustrating for him, and I imagine he'll find many things like that that he used to take for granted and will now discover are a barrier. I'm sure it will be the same in terms of the flow of life for all of us. This has been hard, but we've adjusted to it, so all of us will be repatterning.

I saw an inspirational poster on the way out of English Oaks today, and it seemed very appropriate, so I will end with that.