I Need a Vacation

We’ve been home almost a month now, and are slowly getting into the swing of things and a routine.

Here’s a list of the top 10 things we’ve learned since being home:
10. It’s HIGHLY important to make sure the locks on the chair are engaged…especially on hills.
9.  You can actually chase a pea around your plate for 20 minutes.
8.  People stare in stores.  It’s a moral imperative to scare them.
7.  Tickle therapy works wonders!
6.  Ice cube therapy not so much.
5.  Fear-that-you’ll-be-dressed-like-a-James-Bond-girl-for-the-rest-of-your-life therapy works too!
4.  Never watch anything with a split timeline (15 minutes of the first episode of Lost nearly sent us back to the hospital)
3.  Throat punches are an effective anti-therapy
2.  It is not appropriate to yell, “I am Cornholio!” in your best Beavis voice when she gets stuck taking her shirt off.

And the number 1 thing we’ve learned since being home is:
1.  No matter how disabled they are, never, EVER, ask a woman to give up some of her closet space even if she can’t get in there in the chair.

Anissa’s spirits are still as high as ever.  I think mainly due to the constant variety of things going on.

If you sat in a hospital bed for 3 months, and the only thing you wanted was to get home, do you think you’d be happy if all that was going on at home was the TV?  So I guess it’s a good thing that the TV broke before the super bowl, and it took them 3 tries (and a month and a half) to get it fixed.  BTW, I don’t recommend a Samsung…companies should stand by their products…Geek Squad was fairly helpful, but the whole process was just frustrating as heck and one less headache I didn’t need.

Thankfully, the weather broke here some last weekend.  That allowed the kids to get outside and play.  Apparently our house is going to be that house that the neighborhood kids congregate at.  I’m more than good with that.  Last weekend, there were kids here all day every day.  Running in and out, climbing trees, riding bikes, playing tag, and buying ice cream from the ice cream truck (it was THAT nice out), prompting Rachael to say, “This was the best weekend since we’ve moved up here!”

They need to relieve stress too.

They don’t need schedules.

They don’t need parents nipping at them to get their chores done.

They need fun.

They need laughter.

They need skinned knees.

They need to just be kids.

They are helping out big time around the house, and being very thoughtful of what mom can and cannot accomplish just yet.  They’re making their lunches at night before school.  They’re involving mom in their homework and playing some board games with her.  Rachael is probably the most help, because she can actually cook!  More on that in a moment.

Cognitively, and I’ll go into more detail a little further down, she’s doing remarkably well.  Conversations with her are similar to what she was before.  She’s lost some things, but nothing that I’ve found yet that had any emotional weight to it.  For example, she forgot what ice cream was.  Some may think that’s sad, but think about being able to experience THAT again.  Also, once she experiences it, she’s remembering what it was.  She may struggle to remember a name, but that’s getting better all the time too.  Think of when you want to describe something, and it’s on the tip of your tongue.  She has those moments more than most people these days, but even that’s decreasing.

Her humor is still unparalleled.  She’s still funnier than Margaret Cho!

Physically, she’s progressing, but it’s slow.  She’s now able to transfer herself from her chair to the couch.  Try it some time.  One sided.  It’s not as easy as it sounds.  Actually, while you’re reading this, pick your right leg off the ground and try to stand up from a sitting position using just your left leg and arm.  Then try to pivot 90 degrees to sit on something else.  Then try it with shoes on and while on carpet.  Then try it with a couple of drinks in you to throw off your balance (the effects of the injury and her meds).

Then put your right leg in.

And now pull your right leg out.

Put your right leg in and shake it all about.

Yeah, that’s me making it harder on her.  I’m constantly cracking jokes or asking questions while she’s doing this.  I’m trying to work on her multi-tasking at everything, because, in my opinion, sometimes you’ve got to run before you crawl.  If our goal was to just be able to move her leg, then I’d let her concentrate.  But our goal is for her to be able to walk and talk at the same time.  Once she shows me that she can do something, I try to up the level of difficulty.  The therapists can let her focus.  The kids need more.  Our family needs more.  In our house and life, there isn’t all that much time to concentrate, so I’m trying to simulate real world activities.  So, EVERYTHING becomes therapy.  Everything.  She doesn’t need comfort now.  She doesn’t need pity.  She needs help and guidance.  She needs Burgess Meredith pushing her harder.

Next week I’m planning on tying her legs together and making her chase a chicken.

I’m KIDDING.

(Mostly)

Yep.  I’m becoming a therapist.

Her right leg is getting stronger daily.  It doesn’t have a whole lot of fine control yet, but just last night, from a sitting position, she was able to lift it up a few inches.  When she lays down for a nap or exercise, she’s able to bring her leg up with her, avoid the chair with it, and use it some to help scootch her up in the bed.  Minimal ankle movement/stability so far, but I’m the eternal optimist.  When she does a big yawn and a stretch in the morning, that ankle tightens up and the toes point, which is similar to how the top half of her leg started waking up.

The best analogy to all of this that I can think of is probably if you were to leave your house for a few months, you’d probably turn everything off.  When you came back, you’d have to systematically go through and turn things on again.  One by one, things are turning on for her, just very S-L-O-W-L-Y.

She’s now able to activate her right shoulder.  She has more power pulling it down/back but can also push it forward, bend SOME at the elbow and we’re starting to see SOME random/uncontrolled movements in her fingers.

In her face, the left side of her jaw is so tight she can’t open her mouth up more than 9 millimeters.  They’re going to try botox to loosen that up this week.  She’s starting to slur her words because her mind is finally moving faster than her mouth is.  I keep envisioning that there’s a magic button that will make that work.  I’ve been having this recurring dream.  In that dream, her mouth just starts working normally again, and I keep asking her what we did to get it to work, but she’s so damn excited that it’s working, she doesn’t stop to tell me.

Kinda frustrating for it to be just out of reach…daily.  But, at least it’s starting to be within sight, and that’s what keeps me going.  Those little baby steps here and there.  The other day, I did actually get to see her walk about 10 feet with the help of 2 people and a walker.  One was making sure she didn’t tip over and the other was helping straighten her right leg when she brought it down.  Not all that graceful just yet, but definitely progressing.

I do need to share one funny thing that happened this weekend.

This weekend, the weather was not so nice, but Rachael had a friend, Katie, sleep over.  There were late night movies and pillow fights and the only casualty that night was one popped air mattress.  The next morning, however, was a different story.  The girls, both 8, did the sweetest thing.  They made breakfast for everyone.  It was so special.  They were hopping around the kitchen doing things without much supervision and having a ball.  The goal was muffins and pancakes.  The result was something different.  The muffins were awesome.  The pancakes were made with love and chocolate chips.  They even made a super special big one for Anissa.  Whatever I write about them simply won’t do them justice.  They were awful.  The consistency of the sole of a shoe, and probably not much difference in taste.  You could literally play frisbee with them.

I couldn’t keep a straight face and had to keep looking away to not laugh and crush their effort.

Anissa, however, thanks to the facial weakness kept a straight face and looked me dead in the eye and said, “These are wonderful!  You girls did such a great job, why don’t you give Peter two.  He’ll be happy to eat them.”

Like I said…she’s doing pretty well cognitively, and EVERYTHING is therapy.