Emily walks 200-300 feet every day she's at Craig now. Usually about 100 feet working on balance and taking steps without holding on in the parallel bars and a 200 foot lap around 2-West with her hemi-walker. She doesn't need any cueing or help with balance any more. Celeste still considers it minimum assist because she's not confident in Emily's balance yet. On Friday Emily walked about 25 feet with a forearm crutch instead of the hemi-walker. The hemi-walker is fine at Craig with it's wide halls and doorways, but it's pretty difficult to use at home with normal width halls and doors.
Amputees and low-spinal chord injury paras use forearm crutches a lot. It's a single long pole with a forearm cuff and an ergonomic grip for her hand. Her first few minutes walking with it on Friday were kind of shaky, but once she got the feel for proper placement and developed some confidence using it she did much better. I actually thought she was walking as well if not a little better than with the hemi-walker.
Emily's right arm and hand are really showing some improvement. Yesterday she was bending and straightening her right arm while laying on her back. She was also able to press up a 2-pound weighted bar using both arms, keeping the bar level and lowering it with control. When she was sitting up she could do the same movement with the weighted bar straight out in front. She's also fairly consistently able to relax her hand and straighten her fingers and bring them back into a fist. We're out of the big, ugly hinged arm brace and hopefully through with casts. Em was fitted for a new wrist/hand brace on Wednesday that's working well so far. Her skin is so sensitive we have to build up our time in braces really slowly. Next week she'll likely start working with a new device called a Saebo Flex. It's an engineered splint that allows her to actually use the tone in her right hand to purposefully use the hand to pick things up, hold them, and let them go.
School work is going really well. Emily isn't having any trouble at all completing her homework, and in fact she's been doing statistics and chemistry homework in as little as 15-20 minutes. Ryan, if you read this post you could let Professor Jerry Reitman at Duke know that Emily's using his Statistics 101 problems from a few years ago as her probability curriculum. And to Sarah J. and the rest of the chemistry table - Emily's homeschool teacher is making her take tests on chapters Ms. V didn't even make all of you take!
Monday is our first big planning meeting for school in the Fall. Emily turned in her reaudition portfolio 3 days early, and her official letter should be in the mail. Craig is recommending all regular classes with some accommodations. It's a moving target and will have to be reevaluated in August, but it's so good to be moving productively in the direction of school. Emily will be back at DSA in less than 6 months. Sooner if we can ever get clearance to come to Philosophy Club.
We're all tired but so incredibly proud of Emily and all her hard work.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Saturday, February 9, 2008
It's been a busy couple of weeks since I last did a post.
All of Emily's hard work in the parallel bars has paid off - last Monday she tried her hemi-cane again and did much, much better. She's back to walking about 200 feet at a time with the cane without any of the help she needed just a few weeks ago. Her tremor in her left hand is pretty much completely gone, so she can place the cane without any help. She's also gotten the feel of where the cane should be (too far forward and her elbow is too straight, if she maintains a slight bend in the elbow she's placed the cane correctly), so she's able to keep her head up, shoulders back and maintain her balance. It's an amazing improvement. She also doesn't need any help any longer remembering to place the cane first, then step right, and finally step left. We're still hoping that with time and practice she can move on to a cane that's less cumbersome than the hemi (or even no cane at all), but we'll take it for now.
Cognitively Em continues to show good, steady improvement. Every time she does an exercise, she does it faster than the last time - sometimes by several minutes. Her school work is coming along very well. She's having less trouble retrieving information she knew before the accident. She still sometimes loses track of day-to-day details, but then again who doesn't. She's starting to work on learning new material for school and so far so good - when taken in small pieces she's demonstrating that she can learn new information - if the ability is there all we have to do now is wait for it to improve with practice.
Em's right eye has convergence right, left and down now - so no double vision looking in any direction except up. We're seeing some contraction of the right pupil, but it's still larger than the left. Here again, we've seen lots of healing and there's no reason to believe we won't see more. Everyone told us that up would be the last direction she'd get - just gotta keep up the exercises.
Emily had another nerve block injection in her bicep to help relax her elbow a week ago. We got the arm out completely straight and were able to see some contraction in her deltoid, which is a good sign. She's been in a cast since last Monday to give it a good prolonged stretch. Casts are a pain, but we're managing. The new plan is to take the long arm cast off this coming Monday, spend a week or two casting just her wrist and hand, and then hopefully move onto a dynamic brace that will help her start getting some movement/use from here right hand. We've seen some finger movement, so we're hopeful. We're also going to do another round of nerve block injections in her right shoulder in a couple weeks. It's so tight it pulls back and causes her torso to twist which makes walking more difficult - although after several weeks of cueing she's doing a much better job, on her own, of keeping her shoulders straight when she's walking.
Still no progress getting her back into Philosophy and Writing Club. I guess I shouldn't say no progress - we did get a ruling from the DPS administration that attending after-school clubs wouldn't jeopardize her homebound status for classes. DSA says they're working on developing the necessary health plan to so that Emily can safely be in the building for clubs, but nothing's complete. Emily and I have an appointment with her DPS neuropsychologist on Tuesday.
My four days away seem to have gone off without any problems. Many thanks to Grandma Nancy for helping us out - she and Emily did great and Nancy learned a lot from her days at Craig. Many thanks also to all of the wonderful members and staff at the NACWA Winter Conference - all of your kind words, thoughts and prayers mean so much.
All of Emily's hard work in the parallel bars has paid off - last Monday she tried her hemi-cane again and did much, much better. She's back to walking about 200 feet at a time with the cane without any of the help she needed just a few weeks ago. Her tremor in her left hand is pretty much completely gone, so she can place the cane without any help. She's also gotten the feel of where the cane should be (too far forward and her elbow is too straight, if she maintains a slight bend in the elbow she's placed the cane correctly), so she's able to keep her head up, shoulders back and maintain her balance. It's an amazing improvement. She also doesn't need any help any longer remembering to place the cane first, then step right, and finally step left. We're still hoping that with time and practice she can move on to a cane that's less cumbersome than the hemi (or even no cane at all), but we'll take it for now.
Cognitively Em continues to show good, steady improvement. Every time she does an exercise, she does it faster than the last time - sometimes by several minutes. Her school work is coming along very well. She's having less trouble retrieving information she knew before the accident. She still sometimes loses track of day-to-day details, but then again who doesn't. She's starting to work on learning new material for school and so far so good - when taken in small pieces she's demonstrating that she can learn new information - if the ability is there all we have to do now is wait for it to improve with practice.
Em's right eye has convergence right, left and down now - so no double vision looking in any direction except up. We're seeing some contraction of the right pupil, but it's still larger than the left. Here again, we've seen lots of healing and there's no reason to believe we won't see more. Everyone told us that up would be the last direction she'd get - just gotta keep up the exercises.
Emily had another nerve block injection in her bicep to help relax her elbow a week ago. We got the arm out completely straight and were able to see some contraction in her deltoid, which is a good sign. She's been in a cast since last Monday to give it a good prolonged stretch. Casts are a pain, but we're managing. The new plan is to take the long arm cast off this coming Monday, spend a week or two casting just her wrist and hand, and then hopefully move onto a dynamic brace that will help her start getting some movement/use from here right hand. We've seen some finger movement, so we're hopeful. We're also going to do another round of nerve block injections in her right shoulder in a couple weeks. It's so tight it pulls back and causes her torso to twist which makes walking more difficult - although after several weeks of cueing she's doing a much better job, on her own, of keeping her shoulders straight when she's walking.
Still no progress getting her back into Philosophy and Writing Club. I guess I shouldn't say no progress - we did get a ruling from the DPS administration that attending after-school clubs wouldn't jeopardize her homebound status for classes. DSA says they're working on developing the necessary health plan to so that Emily can safely be in the building for clubs, but nothing's complete. Emily and I have an appointment with her DPS neuropsychologist on Tuesday.
My four days away seem to have gone off without any problems. Many thanks to Grandma Nancy for helping us out - she and Emily did great and Nancy learned a lot from her days at Craig. Many thanks also to all of the wonderful members and staff at the NACWA Winter Conference - all of your kind words, thoughts and prayers mean so much.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
