Putting it All into Perspective

The reality is that my day started out kind of bad. This nutso OT (you know the type, they're always late, their hands are going along with their mouths to explain away their incompetence, there's a whole lot of commotion and very little accmplished) should have been in my room to wake me up at 7....yes, that's AM. When OT works with you in the morning before breakfast they actually get you into the shower (otherwise you do your sponge bath in the sink by yourself) and you're all ready for breakfast at 8. Today I also had PT scheduled at 8:30.

So she showed up at 7:30, already 30 minutes late with a multitidue of excuses rolling off her tongue. "Would you like a shower this morning?" Yes. "Ok, I'll be back in a minute." Unfortunately I promptly fell back asleep and when I awoke it was 7:52. Crap. I had 8 minutes to get myself out of bed, cleaned up and over to breakfast.

Motor Mouth was full of excuses, but she did roll me into breakfast where I met my nurse with my next fix. I inhaled about 1/2 of a bagel and swished the pills down with half of my grape juice, and propelled myself down the hall for PT. You know how that went from a previous post.

MM (new acronym for Motor Mouth) told me to come down to see her in OT and she would show me how to put my shoes and socks on. Ok, cool. But, I clearly forgot who I was dealing with. MM. MM yammered about how cool my socks were, handed me one and just stood there. Duh. I don't care for the sock gadget, but wouldn't you think she would have some ideas about how to get them on. I mean if she's just going to stand there then I really don't need her for anything. She watched me fumble around for awhile then without a word put them on me.

Next came the shoes. "I'm not sure your swelling has gone down enough to get your shoes on." HUH? Then seriously wth am I going through this exercise in futility? I am seriously trying to Again, she handed me a shoe and just stood there waching me. I pulled a few of the last laces out opened it wide and got it on. I struggled but finally got it loosely tied. I looked up from my accomplishment, and I kid you not, she had disappeared. No lie, this loon was nowhere to be found!

My roommate and I exchanged a few rolled eye glances and I headed back to my room. Guess what I found on my way? Yes, here came MM carrying a glass of ice water. "Are you practicing walking in your shoes?" Yup, I'm practicing walking right back to my room. "Oh no, we should kill 15 minutes more (aha! Billable Hours!Finally, the first thing I could understand about this entire crazy situation!) how about you lift the bar a few times?" That was technical occupational therapist lingo for do 3 sets of 10 arm curls. I did them and cross my heart hope to die stick a needle in my eye, she had disappeared again. Honestly, you can't make up stuff like this.

There was no stopping me this time. I made a beeline for the door and my room where I could vent in reasonable peace either under the towel (which I forgot) or behind Curtain #2, the bathroom curtain.

Lowering My Expectations

Since I'm checking out of here tomorrow, we needed to go through everything to make sure I can walk far enough, do the steps, and take measurements. Flew through the first two "tests" with no problem. Then we warmed up the knees with a series of exercises and then measured the range of movement. It's taken me all day to write this post because I'm not sure what I think about the outcome. They measured both knees for active and passive straightening and bending. Active is me doing the action, and passive is the therapist pushing my poor fatigued body parts into the crazy pretzel shapes (ok, this might be a slight drug-induced exaggeration):

Active Straightening: Right -7, Left -6
Passive Straightening: Right -5, Left -4
Active Bending: Right 64, Left 45
Passive Bending: Right 72, Left 54

All I know is that when the therapist bent my left knee in as far as she could I let out either a loud moan or a soft scream (LOL! Not sure which). Holy moly that hurt. I guess I thought the right knee measurements were about right but I was surprised that the left measurements were so bad. Big numbers, I'm looking for massive flexion here! I've worked my butt off so is it too much to expect better results?

Apparently so because what actually happened was that I was upset, I vented to a friend, and I forgot to put the towel over my head. The truth is out there now. They really were tears.

OT: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Staples

Gadgets - Trust me there are more gadgets than you can imagine. This gadget is designed to pick things up. As my neighbor Loren discovered today though, it won't hold a full styrofoam glass of water. Leave it to Loren to decide to clean the floor in my room!

Sock on...yeah, I don't think if does sock off.

Here's the very cool 3-in-1 commode which you can actually place over your commode at home. This will give you some height and the handles help you get up and down. Is this TMI or what??!!

The gel ice bags are worth their weight in gold. This is truly something to look forward to following a painful pt session. Here's the crazy thing about them. This is a rehab facility. The only place these suckers are used is in the pt room. We're supposed to ice the knees at least 6 times a day, so if you have pt twice a day, you still need to get ice on them 4 more times. In the rooms, they have these cheap little "accu-therm" bags that hold next to nothing and don't get cold enough to do anything. Apparently the good gel packs have a habit of disappearing, so here you are in rehab where you can't really do a good job of icing your knees for some strange reason that no one understands.

Each morning the aide changes the dressings (the white strips) and wraps my legs in ace bandages and puts on the slipper socks. The bandages help to keep the swelling down and they stay on until around 8 at night. That's the end of visiting hours and time to take the second sponge bath of the day at the sink in the room. You can kind of see the lines drawn across my knees. The surgeon matches up the lines when he staples the incision shut. I have no idea how many staples were used, but each knee is just a full line of staples all along the white bandages.

Getting out of bed requires you to heft the dead weight of your legs over the side, let gravity help to painfully bend the legs to the floor, push up from the bed, and shift weight onto the walker.

Getting in and out of bed presents all kinds of challenges. A hospital bed allows you to lean on the railings to get some leverage. Occupational Therapy helps you practice all sorts of everyday tasks. In fact, this facility has a mocked up apartment with a bathroom, bedroom, living room, dining room and kitchen. It has a washer, dryer, fridge, sofa, bed...all the stuff you have to deal with at home. Diane took pictures of my OT session on Tuesday.

Turning the Corner

As you can see from the word of the day, it was a rough night. I h0pe that soon my drugged up body will decide to resume those natural bodily functions and save my any more humiliation in the middle of the night.


I was in a stupor this morning, but knew I needed to get a move on to make the day's schedule: 7:00-8:00 Morning Ablutions, 8:00-8:30 Breakfast, 8:30-9:30 PT, 11:30-Noon OT, Noon-1 Lunch, 1:00-2:00 PT, and 5:30 Dinner. I needed to also consider the meds and how to best fit a nap in. Ah the busy schedule of the rehab resident.


It was cutting it close this morning for the AM drug regimine to kick in for PT. But, I didn't feel too bad. In fact, it was going so good that the therpist suggested that if I finished the supine exercises in the morning, we could cut the afternoon time back to 30 min. Hmm. I searched for any hidden meaning in this because those therapists are tricky little buggers. (For example, the slim, attractive therapist says ,"If you do 3 more we can stop. Yeah. What she means is do 3 more of these and we can stop...AND move onto the next thing.) It's all semantics the cute little triksters. I couldn't see any chicanery, and things were feeling pretty good, so I opted to continue on. I did a total of 1.75 hours this morning and when I rated my pain between 2/3 my therapist and I were both thrilled. The bad leg usually hovers around a 5, and sometimes after therapy I've rated it a 7/8 (and if I was not crying under the towel, it was probably an 8/9). Great news, but I was cautious, trying not to be too excited.


I came back to my room and who found me there but Deb and Loren. Loren found that my little "gripper" tool will not hold a full styrofoam glass of water. Boys and their toys.


They went along with me to OT and today we tried the shower bench in the full tub bath. This worked great and I think this will be the way we go. This place actually has a full demo apartment with washer/dryer, fridge, counters, bedroom, bathroom, etc. You can go to the apartment and try out the different types of equipment to decide what will work the best for you and your situation.


Deb and Loren had lunch with me and we went for my reduced PT schedule. It's actually good to have someone else go along to PT. Just because I think I'm getting a lot of range of motion doesn't mean that's really what's happening. There aren't really good mirrors so it's sometimes hard to determine if you're doing it correctly. The good news was that following Round 2 I rated my pain level at about a 1. Have I turned the corner? Tomorrow will tell.

It has been confirmed now that I will be coming home on Saturday. I believe the hospital bed, walker, and commode are being delivered tomorrow. I'm really happy about the news, but I'm a little nervous too. This is a controlled, relatively safe environment and being home will be, well it'll be real life I supposed.

Tag Team and a Little Bit of Nature

Kera and Gwen made another road trip to visit me last night. It was totally unexpected because I know Kera had so many things scheduled during this last week of Gwen's kindergarten year. So, this was quite a treat!


This beautiful multi-building rehab facility is, unfortunately, located in the middle of the ghetto. Kera left Gwen with me and went in search of Panera, where she preordered their dinner. An hour went by when Kera finally called me. It was like having a conversation with myself when I'm lost. Kera, crying, "I don't know where I am, I'm totally lost. This !@#$ tomtom...." I felt so bad for her: they were hungry, the weather was rainy, and she was lost in the ghetto, and her mama cried. Hmmm, there might be a million dollar seller in those lyrics! I'm sorry it was so stressful for Kera, and I really did enjoy the company. There's just nothing like a mother/daughter convo .

Earlier in the day I came back to my room and I had received a gorgeous floral arrangement with purple and pinkish flowers. Perched among the blooms are these really cool, realistic looking butterflies. Thanks Sue & Galen - it's like having a piece of nature right in my room.

Word of the Day

Fleet

Note to Mom

Mom, I know I made you run all over the Harrisburg area looking for a particular gym short. I know that we never found them and that I "settled" for something less than what I wanted. But, we paired them up with some cool tops and I figured I'd just make do. Well, I'm here to tell you how fantastic these shorts have been. I have trouble getting the other ones (my old favorites) on. These new ones open very wide and are really stretchy - I can actually get them on myself. Today I'm stylin' in the cool black/white/chartreuse green ones. Someday I'll get the message that Mother Knows Best!