Rehab Chronicles - Day 20

I spent some time at the rehab with mom this morning.  When I got there, she was back in the cramped little occupational therapy room with about four other people, all working on various tasks that seem tedious and meaningless to us, but were obviously tailored to suit individual needs.

Mom was working on a goofy little horsey puzzle, but it was meant as a coordination challenge.  She completed it with absolutely no problem - all while standing with the walker.  In total, she stood for 21 minutes before needing a break.  That was way past her goal for the day and completely shattered the record of 15 minutes she accomplished just the day before.  And, for the first time really, she was able to get up out of the chair and stand with the walker on her own.  The occupational therapist was her spotter, but didn't even need to lay a hand on her as mom reached forward and pulled herself up to a standing position then sat back down.  She did this exercise somewhere around 6 or 7 times in about 3 minutes.  All involved were very excited about this big step.

She wrapped up there and we had some time to go back upstairs to her room where we just hung out for a few minutes.  She got out her shoes - put on socks and tied them with no problem - and we went back down from some physical therapy.  I was carting her around all this time in the wheelchair, which I suppose was giving some hapless orderly a bit of a break.

Down at PT, she did some walks.  The first was through the PT area, up the ramp to the hallway, and around the corner and then back to where we started.  It was no sweat at all for her.

Before she got on to the second walk, in which she went another 10 or 15 feet farther than the first one, she did some leg exercises with 3 pound weights strapped to her ankles.  She did 10 slow lifts with each leg, and then repeated for a grand total of 20 reps per leg.  I took the time to interview her and ask her some questions about her therapy.  Unfortunately, the file is too big for blogger, so I will find some other way to post it later.

In the meantime, here is a another brief video of her walking therapy.

Oh, and about the t-shirt:  Her shingles, while nearly gone to the naked eye, are as tender and sore as ever.  She had to cut the shoulder of her shirt so it wouldn't rub against her skin.

After that, we did some online shopping, and she had an outstanding lunch - chef's salad, fruit plate, and some sort of custard pie with caramel drizzle.  It was an eventful morning!  The big meeting is on Friday, but her physical therapist said her "team" would be having its own meeting tomorrow and they would begin talking about what happens AFTER she is released.  Let's hope it's soon!