Day 26; Day 1 of Rehab - January 16, 2013

Tom was able to spend most of the day with dad today. He arrived to St. Joe's around 10:00 o'clock this morning. Tom was able to sit in with dad during the morning sessions of Occupational and Speech Therapy. The purpose of today is just to assess where dad is at. For dad's occupational  therapy, they tested the strength in his fingers and hands. It turns out that dad's right hand is considerably stronger than his left hand (he is left handed so this was a bit of a surprise).  This just means that they are going to work on strengthening his dominant hand.

During his time with the Occupational therapist they showed him a series of four pictures that he had to put in order. The first series were pictures of how to do laundry. He put the pictures in order with no problems at all. The next series of pictures were how to make a bed. This he struggled with a little bit, mixing up a few of the steps but he was able to fix his mistake without any help or prompts. After putting these series of pictures in order, he then had to put shapes in patterned order (by shape and color). They timed dad to see how long it would take him. I am not sure how long it took him to do it, but in the he did it so I see that as a good thing. :-)

Next, dad traveled down to do speech therapy. They asked dad a lot of questions.  He gets asked these same basic questions every time and with every therapist:

1. What's your name? (Dad answers this correctly every time, unless he wants to be sarcastic, then he will tell people his name is Jose or Barack Obama).
2. How old are you? (He has not been able to answer this correctly yet)
3. What is your date of birth? (every time he is able to answer the correct month and day, but struggles to remember the year he was born. He knows that he was born in the 1950's but does not remember the specific year).
4. What year is it? (He does not answer this correctly).
5. What is today's date? (He seems to remember that the month starts with the letter "J" but does not remember that it is January).

Next they quizzed dad with a lot of "Yes/No" questions. To assess his memory and retention they would read dad stories, then ask him questions/details from the story. Tom said that on this task he scored a 60%.

By the time he finished up with these two therapists, it was time for lunch. The morning therapy wore dad out. He went back to the room, ate some food and fell asleep. He was so fatigued that they could not wake dad up at 2:00 p.m. for his afternoon therapy. The doctor said that this is very normal and that in a few days, dad will be adjusted to the new schedule.

Later on in the afternoon a cardiologist came in to check on dad's defibrillator. They did a data download and discovered that one of his lines had moved. They took dad down for an X-Ray, this confirmed what the data said. So, dad is now scheduled to go into surgery to have the defibrillator lines put back in their proper spots on his heart. It is a minor procedure and should only take about 30 minutes to do. Dad should be able to participate (with limited movement) in his therapies for the afternoon.  

Prayer requests for dad:

• Pray that his mind will continue to make the necessary connections.
• Pray that his surgery will go well tomorrow.
• Pray that he will have continued peace of mind about where he is at.