Doug is still at Region's Rehabilitation Unit and making lots of great progress. He participates in six half hour sessions of PT, OT, and Speech therapy six days/week. He can walk with a walker, and a PT to lean on, for about 150 feet and walk up and down four steps.

Occupational Therapy is helping him relearn doing every day tasks like dressing, brushing teeth, and cleaning a table (ha ha, it's all about stretching his shoulder as he wipes a cloth on a table). He has a lot of weakness in his right arm and needs medication and stretching to return flexibility to his shoulder. He wants to use his phone and the OT helped with a stand and practicing a bit yesterday. I think that would go a long way toward him feeling like he is getting his life back. Fine motor skills with his non-dominant hand will need work if he wants to use the phone though. 

He is working on language skills and strengthening and coordination of his swallowing muscles. He can now eat small bites and drink slightly thickened liquids. His speech is pretty clear and he can speak in sentences but often the last word escapes him, which is very frustrating to him. Still, we manage conversations. His love of words is helping him with vocabulary and spelling and he is beginning to write (with his left hand). He can read individual words and sentences, but paragraphs are still challenging, which is pretty frustrating to him because he would like to read a newspaper.  The relearning of language skills as he rebuilds pathways in his brain often seem a lot like pre-school language development.

The dietician was vetoing suggestions from the doctor to remove the feeding tube in Doug's stomach because he wasn't eating enough and was losing weight, which is not conducive to healing the brain. Eating is hard work, and he says boring, but he has finally joined the "clean plate club" so the tube was removed on Thursday.

The health insurer continues to authorize his treatment at the hospital "until he is ready to go home," rather than sending him to a Transition Care facility. (Most people stay at Regions Acute Rehab for 10-14 days.) We don't know what they mean by home, but it will be months before Doug can return to our home so I'm in the process of searching for Assisted Living. AL places are all very different in the care they can provide so it's challenging. He can now transfer with one person assistance and has the feeding tube out so we're hoping there will be more options available., hopefully in Stillwater. Doug's doctor is very frustrated with the insurer and spoke to them this week about how ridiculous their decisions are. 

My next post here will be after Doug moves to Transition Care (after appeals to insurers) or Assisted Living. We don't know when that will be but expect it will be soon.