Paul's Update - 02/14/06

Dear Friends:

Paul had a semi good day. He started off awake and responding to Dad and a friend that came by. They were talking about his boy scouting days of going camping. They asked Paul if he'd like to go camping this summer with Tabby & the baby and he nodded "yes". Dad & Paul's friend were joking about some things that have happened over the years and one particular story .. a very funny and private story to them all ... Paul got a really big grin on his face!! The particular event happened about four years ago but he evidently remembers it well!!! We also had a very dear friend from the hospital come by today. A family member of one of the other patients that also had a head injury came by to visit. What a blessing for us! He was awake a lot today. By the time PT came he was tired and didn't really want to work out much. Pt starts in the hallway with the speech therapist. She worked with the cones that he is suppose to drop when she bangs a pot; he did that but was reluctant to be cooperative. She tried to get him to chew on a plastic stick with a weight on the end. The idea is to have him hold it in his mouth and move it around. If he lets loose of it in his mouth it will fall out. This is suppose to help strengthen his jaw muscles. They got some cinnamon & garlic powder for him so smell, he didn't like the garlic at all, he got very mad at them. When they asked him if his name is Paul, he nodded "yes", but when they asked him to look at Dad he turned a bit but really didn't look at him. Once they moved into the therapy room they worked with the sandbag weight on a pulley. He was able to do it a couple of times but he wasn't cooperative with that either. He really just didn't WANT to do work today. When they sat him on bench to work with cones, he did it a couple times but again didn't really want to do it. The speech therapist agreed to downsize the trach from 6 to 4 in effort to wean him off. This becomes really important if we need to start thinking about taking him home. The sooner he can get rid of the trach the better it will be. We've had lots of problems with nurses knowing the proper way to suction the trach. The head nurse worked with other nurses today to make sure they all knew how to do suctioning. I hope that helps since the last thing we need is to have bacteria introduced into his lungs! Tomorrow is the CT at Fair Oaks. He has an appointment at 3:30. An interesting thing happened today .. we had a catholic priest from nearby church come in who had been there once before. He knew Paul's story and how he used to work on Fairfax County Police motorcycles. He did ALL the setups on new police bikes for the entire fleet of Fairfax County Motorcycles. He suggested that county police officers could come by to see Paul hoping that it may be great stimulus for him. We agreed!!! How cool is that?? Tomorrow Keith will attempt to call Mount Vernon. He was busy with new patients today and didn't have time to do that. They (the therapists) looked at the Ranchos Los Amigos coma scale and agreed that Paul is somewhere between 3 and 6. He does parts of each of the categories up to 6 but not all in any one category. We aren't sure what Mount Vernon considers when they look at him, but we think he is doing well enough most of the time to consider going to rehab! Pray that they will see that!!

Blessings, Lynne & Carl