One Month Anniversary

Sorry to be so long since my last post.....much has been happening--some good, some not so good. But we're taking it one day at a time, and are making steady progress.

Monday, Jan. 16, was the one month anniversary of Tom's accident. Hard to believe it's been a month since I got that fateful call from the Grady Hospital Trauma Unit that perhaps I didn't know that my husband was in a car accident and was in their emergency room. I asked if he was OK, and all they would tell me is that he was alive. And that they had him in the "red zone." That didn't sound good. Then when I got there, no one would let me see him or even tell me his condition until the doctor came to inform me of what no one else was allowed to tell me....that he had no feeling and couldn't move from his chest down.

That seems like old history now. Here at the Shepherd Center, we see people who are in the very same condition as Tom; we see those who have more use of their arms and upper body than he has; and we see many who are in much worse condition than him. If we had only gone home after this hospitalization and had not been around so many other spinal cord injury patients, it might be easy to say "woe is me," but being here makes it easy to count our blessings and be glad for what arm use Tom does have, and be excited at what all he's able to learn in order to function in an almost normal life.

He's had x-rays on his throat/swallowing mechanism to figure out what the problem is with his swallowing. The good news is that there isn't anything seriously wrong enough to require surgery; the bad news is that there is some sort of scar tissue or something that is the result of his 2 neck surgeries, and this makes it difficult for him to swallow without having some of it go into his windpipe. The answer to this is that he has been on a soft diet for weeks, and he has to drink a sip after each bite. And the better news is that he just began working with a therapist who is giving him swallowing exercises, which include biofeedback where they video him swallowing and he can watch what he does and learn how to swallow more effectively without choking. He just started this and he says it's helping him a lot. Yesterday they allowed him to eat a normal diet, rather than the soft diet, and he's very excited about that.

Yesterday he fed himself dinner for the first time, including drinking from a cup. His hands won't grasp, so he has velcro straps with a slot that the fork/spoon can fit into that hold it in place while he eats. He uses more arm action to get the bites to his mouth, rather than wrist action like the rest of us. It's tedious, hard work, and sometimes frustrating and messy, but he's plugging along and getting better at it.

He is finally over the pneumonia and feeling good. He is not as weak as he was, and is able now to really get into his physical and occupational therapy, which is hard work. He's able to be up in the wheelchair all day, rather than in bed, and he's getting good at maneuvering the chair. He has to learn to brush teeth, hair, etc., in different ways than before.

One very exciting thing is the voice activated computer system that he is learning to use. It's called Dragon 8 and they say that pretty much everything that can be done on a computer, can be done with the voice activation system. He is anxious to get immersed in it enough to be able to post his own message to this blog.

I have been able to leave on Saturdays to conduct events at Southern Oaks, my business. I line up visitors to come be with him--not so much to attend to his medical needs like before, but to keep up his spirits, and help out a little with getting him blankets, feeding, etc.

I am taking classes to learn how to do his catheters, bowel programs (doesn't that sound fun? It's a program!), respiratory care, bathing, skin care to prevent bed sores, etc. I'm learning waaay more than I ever thought I'd need to know about bodily fluids!

More later.......our spirits are up, our finances are down..... can't have everything!

Michele