Paul's Update - 0/20/06

Dear Friends:

Dad & I got to the hospital today about 8:30 today. Paul was wide awake and looked at us when we came in. PT was scheduled for 9am. Over the weekend the nurse had requested that Paul's medicines be administered at 7am instead of 8am. Hopefully this will allow him time to adjust to the drugs in his system prior to PT. He did a little better today than he did on Saturday. He was able to walk about 30 feet today with lots of assistance. He is pretty exhausted from the drugs but he tries. At 10 a.m. the Occupational Therapist came in. She tried to get him to put his left hand to his mouth. The drugs he is getting are suppose to relax his muscles to enable him to use his arms. When she attempted to get his hand to his mouth it caused him a great deal of pain. He groaned and his face became red. She decided to take him to the therapy room and try to stretch his other muscles instead. She worked his arms and shoulders. She laid him on his side and tried to get him to grab a ball. He didn't seem to have much interest in this activity but once she got the ball in his hand he was able to hold onto it. He wouldn't give it to Tabby though ... oh well!! Speech therapy was at 1pm. Dad went with him while Tabby & I stayed to visit with Brandon and his family who had come to visit. Brandon was at Fairfax Hospital at the same time as Paul with a very similar injury. He is doing GREAT and we really enjoyed visiting with him, his mom & his grandparents. Speech was not great today because Paul's arm was really bothering him. She broke off a piece of a popsicle and put it on a spoon to see if he could eat with it. His arm was hurting so much that he wasn't even interested in the popsicle. She worked to exercise his jaw and his tongue. Tomorrow she is going to try to work with some machines that will help Paul communicate by using his hands to push buttons. Tonight Dad asked the doctor to X-ray Paul's elbow to see if there is a reason for all this pain. The doctor also increased the muscle relaxer again today. He feels that Paul's body will eventually get use to the drugs but it is really hard for us to see him be so sleepy much of the time. Since Paul is moving so slowly it looks like most of his rehab will be happening at home ... in about 9 days. As a refresher I will include the webpage that describes the Ranchos Los Amigos scale of recovery for a Coma Patient. Paul is still at about 5-6 on this scale. He does some of the things in each of these levels but not all of them in the higher levels. I will also include a website that describes what a "coma" is. I think this is a very interesting and accurate description of a coma. The article is a little long and wordy but worth reading. It mentions the Glascow Scale and Paul is approximately an 11 on this scale.

Love & Hugs, Lynne & Carl