The PBs are coming thick and fast at present, but apparently slow down after a while. With the support of the physio and me, Mike walked from his room to the day room for lunch. He said his feet feel less heavy and more in control. He also managed to conduct an economics education session on opportunity cost, for the physio and speech language therapist, so all is not lost! He managed to walk back again after lunch, but then fell asleep really fast.
I had a chat with the physio about the difference in rehab between brain damage through stroke and through injury. She said a stroke is usually clearly in one part of the brain, so the medics can fairly accurately predict the deficits and what rehab will be required. With Mike's diffuse brain injury, they can't see where the particular severe injury is located, thus they have no idea what the deficits will be and how they will combine. So the rehab has to be very individual and they have to constantly adjust to the deficits they find. She also said that while stroke patients experience fatigue, it is not as severe as in a brain injury it doesn't hit as fast and the worst fatigue disappears relatively quickly. Thus the rehab can be lengthier and more energetic.
There endeth my lesson for the day!
Lee
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Thursday, April 28, 2005
28 April:A PCB: Personal Coke Best
They installed a Coke dispensing machine in Cavit today, and Mike got to drink the first bottle. Now that is a milestone for Mike, his first Coke since 20 February.
The nurses are pleased, even amazed, by his progress. They are telling him now that they thought he was likely to die when he had the lung infection. I took the chance to ask how much weight he had lost at his worst. A nurse checked the records and declared that his lowest recorded weight was 52 kg. He is now heading in the right direction, being back up to 54 kg. So that is about a 20 percent loss from his pre-accident 'Ironman' weight. I gather that a 20 percent weight loss is not unusual for this injury.
He is feeding himself very well now. Coke is one of the hardest things to manage, for reasons I don't really understand. It looks like they might be able to remove the tube from his stomach in a week or two.
As he improves they are stepping up the rehab programme. A mini target is presumably to get him to be able to take a step or two on his own. The extra physio tires him out, of course. So he needs lots of rest and if he misses out on rest he does not sleep well at night, which sets him back, and they have to cut back on the physio. So there seems to be no end in sight to the need to limit his visitors where possible. Currently available slots are being filled by friends passing through or heading off to do their OE. We are amazed by the number of you who are heading off overseas. So, Wellingtonians, please continue to be patient.
Bryce
The nurses are pleased, even amazed, by his progress. They are telling him now that they thought he was likely to die when he had the lung infection. I took the chance to ask how much weight he had lost at his worst. A nurse checked the records and declared that his lowest recorded weight was 52 kg. He is now heading in the right direction, being back up to 54 kg. So that is about a 20 percent loss from his pre-accident 'Ironman' weight. I gather that a 20 percent weight loss is not unusual for this injury.
He is feeding himself very well now. Coke is one of the hardest things to manage, for reasons I don't really understand. It looks like they might be able to remove the tube from his stomach in a week or two.
As he improves they are stepping up the rehab programme. A mini target is presumably to get him to be able to take a step or two on his own. The extra physio tires him out, of course. So he needs lots of rest and if he misses out on rest he does not sleep well at night, which sets him back, and they have to cut back on the physio. So there seems to be no end in sight to the need to limit his visitors where possible. Currently available slots are being filled by friends passing through or heading off to do their OE. We are amazed by the number of you who are heading off overseas. So, Wellingtonians, please continue to be patient.
Bryce
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
26th April: On with the rehab
Today Mike started in on more intensive rehab. First stop was speech language therapy. Mike's right side weakness affects the right side of his face, mouth muscles and even his tongue, so there is a lot of hard basic work to be done to get more clarity of speech. Next stop was physio and the realisation of the difficulty of really basic exercises, such as very light lat pulldowns. One problem is that after about three reps of these really light exercises, Mike is utterly exhausted. However, Mike being Mike, he was thrilled to be exercising again and more challenged than perturbed about the long journey to fitness.
We had a chat about all the resting Mike's having to do, or what Mike calls 'waiting'. One of the nurses is from Chile, so Mike's getting him to teach him some Spanish. I think learning even a little of another language should help forge those new neural pathways he needs. Plus presumably it will cheer him up about everyone else heading overseas.
We're still having to really carefully manage Mike's visitors. Partly it's because of basic eternal tiredness and also to conserve his energy for the rehab work.
Regards
Lee
We had a chat about all the resting Mike's having to do, or what Mike calls 'waiting'. One of the nurses is from Chile, so Mike's getting him to teach him some Spanish. I think learning even a little of another language should help forge those new neural pathways he needs. Plus presumably it will cheer him up about everyone else heading overseas.
We're still having to really carefully manage Mike's visitors. Partly it's because of basic eternal tiredness and also to conserve his energy for the rehab work.
Regards
Lee
Monday, April 25, 2005
25th April: Things chugging along well
Our apologies for a gap of a couple of days. It just shows that we are a lot more relaxed about Mike. He's still progressing well. The rehab side has been quiet over the break, but Mike has a series of exercises he is working on. They look so unbelieveably basic when I think about him pre-accident, but they represent unbelieveable progress compared to post-accident. His right side is still a bit shaky but a whole lot better.
The main challenge at present is still the one of managing his fatigue. Mike doesn't generally realise that he is tired, but he's working on it. He really wants to be working more on his walking, but it can only be in very short bursts followed by lengthy rests.
He's busy trying to remember events in February, but most of the month before the acccident is a blank at this stage. We think he will get a lot of it back, but he seems to need to piece the whole time together. If any of you can add some pieces of his 6 weeks prior to the accident, Mike would be really pleased. I thought he'd been to an Ironman camp a few weeks before, but he has no recollection of that particular camp.
Mike's close friends, Kim and Paul, came down from Tauranga for the weekend to see him. He really enjoyed that and it was good for us to see through there eyes how much progress he has made since they last saw him in Auckland. Kim and Paul are soon off overseas and I think Mike feels he might be the last young person left in New Zealand.
Regards
Lee
The main challenge at present is still the one of managing his fatigue. Mike doesn't generally realise that he is tired, but he's working on it. He really wants to be working more on his walking, but it can only be in very short bursts followed by lengthy rests.
He's busy trying to remember events in February, but most of the month before the acccident is a blank at this stage. We think he will get a lot of it back, but he seems to need to piece the whole time together. If any of you can add some pieces of his 6 weeks prior to the accident, Mike would be really pleased. I thought he'd been to an Ironman camp a few weeks before, but he has no recollection of that particular camp.
Mike's close friends, Kim and Paul, came down from Tauranga for the weekend to see him. He really enjoyed that and it was good for us to see through there eyes how much progress he has made since they last saw him in Auckland. Kim and Paul are soon off overseas and I think Mike feels he might be the last young person left in New Zealand.
Regards
Lee
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)