“It’s sort of like he’s stuck in quicksand,” Ken’s case manager at New England Rehab explained this morning. “It’s a huge effort for him to do anything and every step tires him out enormously.” But he’s trying hard, and after a week everyone has seen signs of progress. She explained this during our first meeting there.
We arrived here this morning during OT, and with the therapist sitting at his bedside helping him bend his left arm, we saw him actually move it slowly. She assisted him a bit, but told us he was creating the initial movement. We could see the effort it took, so we knew exactly what the case manager meant when she talked to us later.
They’re estimating that Ken will be in rehab for 6 weeks. It will depend on the progress he makes each week that they’ll need to demonstrate to the insurance company. There’s no guarantee that he’ll be walking when he’s discharged, but he must be able to transfer to a car. In that case he’ll be able to continue as an outpatient. It’s all a little overwhelming, but we’ll take it one step at a time. In the meantime, we’ll need to investigate adaptations to the house so we can have contractors in place in case we need to make changes for him.
And also in the meantime, we see that he’s making progress. We saw it in PT yesterday and again with his eating. I made a cheese and sour cream kugel (noodle pudding) last night for the family and we took some to Ken today, which he was looking forward to eating. The Speech Therapist approved its consistency and was there overseeing his eating when we left.
They might move him to another room. The doctor feels it would be better for him to be in a room where the door is to his left so Ken will be forced to turn that way to see who’s entering and leaving – another strategy to get him to shift more movement to the left side. Clever, these rehab people.
My favorite punctuation mark is the semicolon. And it's an apt metaphor for recent years of my life: it's more than a comma pause, not quite a period stop; it usually appears in the middle of a sentence; no one quite knows how to use it properly; it's a sigh of contemplation; a knowing wink; an upward glance of reflection.
Dear Ken's Mom,
ReplyDeleteThis is a beautiful and sad post, it made me cry. You sound like a wonderful, wise, strong, and caring woman.
You are right, although things will be different, Ken will continue to improve and watch his boys grow up and have a wonderful life with Jamie.
I think of Ken everyday. (If I weren't an atheist I would pray for him.)
Chuck McCall (friend of Ken's from Brown)
Thank you for posting, Ken's mom! It's great to hear your perspective and to hear how things are going. I send Ken thoughts every day, too. And I am so, so glad to hear that you see progress. Ken - I hope you feel progress, too - you are doing such tremendous work. Love, EFS
ReplyDelete