Today was a great day in lots of ways. First, Mark did great in all the therapies again. The pool therapy was especially good. Mark's legs were completely straight and he was not "pretzel man" as he and the therapists have joked about. He was able to get both legs straight and kicking while supporting himself with noodles. It was great and Rich got to see it too.
Then he went to the Erigo and did very well on that again today. Yesterday's PT was on a special treadmill called a Loca-Mat (or something close to that) and he really did well. Everyone is very thrilled with his progress in these areas.
We had our conversation with the neurophysicologists today. They completed their first testing and evaluations on Mark and basically, he is doing much better than anyone expected. His problem solving skills, language, long-term memory, and speech are all in the average range, which is good. He was probably in the high above average range prior to the accident so this was very encouraging. He did have some deficits in the short term memory area, which everyone expected since that is the area of the brain that was most affected. He will probably have this issue for the rest of his life, but that's not to say it won't improve over the next few years. They are also teaching him how to adjust his life skills to compensate for this problem and he is getting better at that as well. Overall, we were very optimistic that these disabilities will be liveable.
There was other good news today on the floor. Our friend Anthony, who is AJ's dad and Ivonne's husband, actually ate ice cream for the speech therapist. He was able to eat and swallow it well and opened his mouth in anticipation for more. This is a wonderful step for him since he has not done this for the entire time he has been here which is coming up to a year. We were delighted for him, and Ivonne.
These are the days that make all of us happy.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Well, today it was back to work. We had a nice holiday yesterday and were able to take a drive and visit a friend and go out to lunch. Mark enjoyed another steak. He seems to be making up for lost time!
He had all the usual therapies today and Rich was able to get him squared away with each one after we returned the van and I went off to get a haircut. It was a red letter day in the Erigo department, however. Mark was able to do 1395 steps in 40 minutes which was great and was able to stand at 60 degrees upright. These were vast improvements over last week even. The real red letter was that he said he actually felt great using it, despite some pain. Lindsay, Mark’s therapist said this comment had better show up in this blog because it needed to be on the record! Here ya go Lindsay! Great job!