An Update on Dad

Good morning! I apologize for the lack of updates on dad. Times are busy, and it is hard keeping up with the Blog while I am at mom and dads because they do not have Internet.

Dad has been doing outpatient rehabilitation at Chelsea Hospital three days a week. Last week it was determined that dad no longer needed Physical Therapy. He was walking so well that the physical therapist was getting winded. Based on her assessment, dad is moving and walking like that of a 55 year old man (in 20 days he will be 55...so I would saw that he is right on with where he is supposed to be).

Because of the therapy and schedule we have dad on at home, Occupational Therapy only needs to meet with dad once a week. We have dad on a pretty rigorous schedule at home. Mom wakes dad up at 6:30, they spend 30 minutes working on dad's routine in the bathroom. After that they have a specific routine they follow in the morning until 9:30 when they sit down and have their first therapy session together. Therapy usually takes a about an hour to do. I have spent a lot of time researching things to do for dad. His occupational and speech therapist have also been wonderful about providing at home activities for dad. Once therapy is done dad has "free" time. In this time he has to do some exercise (riding the bike, going for a walk in the field with the dogs, etc.), sometimes he cleans and organizes, sometimes he reads. Then he and mom have a lunch time routine, then dad has "free" time until either he goes to Chelsea for therapy or does another round of therapy in the afternoon at home with mom.

Dad meets with the Speech Therapist three times a week (Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays). They do a lot of things with dad from working on his memory to helping him read and write. According to the last assessment they did, dad is reading at 5th grade reading level. He has found that it is much easier to read large print. If the print is too small he tends to struggle more. Something else that they discovered is that as a result of the brain injury dad's eyes do not currently work together. If you watch dad closely while he is doing his eye exercises you can see that the right eye is slightly slower than the left. How does this affect his vision? Well, it means that dad sees things lightly to the left and down from where it is actually at. Does this mean that dad will never be back to himself again? Absolutely not! Dad's brain is already compensating for this change in vision. If it was not compensating then every time he reached for something he would miss it. OT is working with dad to strengthen his eyes and we have been given exercises to do with dad at home that will help to improve this as well.

Dad needs to be on a rigid routine right now to help him get into the habit of doing every day type activities (if he doesn't have someone supervising him and guiding him then he has a tendency to miss steps). We try to schedule time for dad to do some therapeutic activities outside of the house as well. On Saturday, Amber and I took dad grocery shopping, another time Nathan took dad to the hardware store and to the Barber to get a hair cut. Although these things seem simple, they are still therapeutic. We have dad Navigate for us, he has to pay for things with cash so he is forced to add up the money and make sure he is getting the right change back, he has to find the things on the list, etc.

We continue to see improvements every day. If dad struggles with one task one day, we teach him how to do the task and the next day it is much much easier for him. We are so thankful for the continued improvement in dad. (I know dad is too!)

I will try my best to update this a few times a week from this point forward. If you have specific questions about dad don't hesitate to call and talk to us or dad. If you want to visit with dad just call in advance so that we can make sure it's not a time he has therapy.