Ryan attended his first "Group Therapy" session. This is a session that occurs at 8:30 a.m. and consists of a few simple activities for a group of patients on the hall. The therapist "orients" the patients. She tells them where they are, the date, and reads some current events. If time allows, she will play a game with the patients that involves thinking, speaking and other interactive skills.
The therapist that directs these "group" sessions is a Recreational Therapist. Monday, Ryan was supposed to attend a baseball game, but it was rained out. So, the therapist wanted to take him on an outing this week to make up for it. She asked if I was doing anything special. I told her it was my birthday tomorrow and that my mom was going to take me to the mall. She thought that would be a great first outing for Ryan and told me that she was going to arrange for him to go too.
Ryan's normal 9 a.m. PT session was rescheduled for 1 p.m. Ryan's Speech Therapist heard the schedule change and decided to grab him in the morning since she was going to be busy during his normal 11 a.m. session.
Since Ryan is doing so well with the ice chips, his speech therapist decided that she wanted to try giving him some sort of soft food. She gave him the choice of apple sauce, pudding or jello. He chose the apple sauce. (Just so you know, this is the first food Ryan has tasted since before his accident.)
He did great! He was swallowing with no signs of aspiration (stuff going down the wrong pipe). He ate the entire cup of apple sauce. (I would too if I hadn't eaten anything for close to two months.)
The therapist was so thrilled with his results, she bumped up the barium swallow test to tomorrow at 11 a.m. (It was schedules for next Tuesday.) She also wanted to get the test done early so that while we were at the mall tomorrow, if Ryan wanted to eat anything, he could.
She also gave Ryan a test for his awareness and thinking skills. His sense of humor was in full swing this morning. When she asked how long he had been in the hospital, he said, "too long" without any hesitation.
Also, when she told us that she was going to try to get his barium test moved up, I told her to use her "cute female powers" to convince the radiology guys to fit Ryan in. She informed me that it's mainly women that work in the radiology department. When Ryan heard this, he told her, "send me." He had us rolling.
OT and KT worked with Ryan at 10 a.m. They had him sit upright for 5 minutes unassisted. He did great. They also worked with him on the chest press exercises and some leg exercises.
After his muscles were all worked out, he was asked to spell some words using plastic letters on a table. He was able to manipulate the letters and spell and say the requested words. I can see that his arm control and finger dexterity is improving from this task.
PT worked with Ryan on the mat. They had him lay on his stomach and do some leg curl exercises to strengthen his hamstrings. They also brought Ryan up on his knees on the mat. This will help strengthen his hip muscles.
The eye doctor came to see Ryan. He did some tests and determined (which we all knew) that Ryan still has double vision. Ryan will continue to alternate the patch on both eyes during the day to help correct the double vision.
Eventually, the eye doctor wants to take Ryan down to the eye clinic to have his vision checked out completely. He does feel that Ryan's condition is very common with patients with Ryan's type of injury. He also feels that it will get better over time.
It was such a beautiful day, we took Ryan outside to sit in the sun for a little while. It was nice to relax after all the activity.
No comments:
Post a Comment