The Rehab Routine

My apologies to Chris's numerous fans for not posting much since Christmas. The daily grind of work-hospital-sleep-repeat has been wearing me down, and Chris's routine at Spaulding has been fairly monotonous. His progress remains slow and steady - nothing miraculous, just small, incremental improvements. The road back is going to be a long one.

A typical day for Chris at Spaulding starts with an advanced-soft breakfast. Sometimes he has "breakfast group," which I guess is just a way for them to make sure the inmates don't spend too much time by themselves in their rooms. During the day, he has an hour each of physical, occupational, and speech therapies, and sometimes more group time. I usually visit after work, bringing real food when I can to rescue him from the horrors of an advanced-soft dinner (cut up chicken is really unappetizing). I'm running out of healthful take-out ideas, though.

In physical therapy, he's working on going longer distances with the walker and even sometimes short tries with his cane. He says he still "wobbly" with the cane, though, so when he comes home he'll have a wheelchair and walker to move around the house. Thankfully, our house has a fairly open floor plan, so there aren't a lot of corners for him to navigate. I also just had Bathfitters come in to take out the bathtub and put in a shower stall, so he should be able to get in and out of the shower more easily. He's also starting to get up a few stairs, and, again, we'll have to make some changes to our garage stairs so he'll be able to get in and out.

Occupational therapy has got him back in the kitchen, where he made muffins from a mix. They're also working with him on other activities of daily living such as .... stuffing envelopes, mini-golf and bowling. Seriously, they're also making sure he can get dressed and take care of his personal hygiene and get around the house. This week they're going to spend some time on getting in and out of bed safely, which will be more difficult at home without the side rails.

In speech therapy every day, he focuses on words that are hard for him and strategies for making himself understood. Mercifully, there were no apparent deficits in thinking or understanding words, so this is not as difficult as it could be. It's an area Chris struggled with before, though, so it's tough to have to start again from ten steps back.

He will be coming home at the end of next week. The case manager will talk to us both about the kinds of services he'll need when he gets here. Depending on how far he gets with OT, he may still need some daily help getting dressed and washed up, and, for a while, he'll have his therapists visit him at home since he won't be able to drive. I know that having him home will bring with it a whole new set of challenges, but we are both up for taking them on. It's been two very long months since he's been home - it will be so good to sit in front of the fireplace or read the Sunday paper with him again! Visits home just don't cut it, since it's kind of depressing to have to bring him back to the dingy yellow halls of Spaulding.

He says to everyone "I'll be free soon, and I look forward to seeing everyone REAL soon!"