We are now back at Brooks Rehabilitation in room #4318. On Thursday, Dennis was evaluated by his physical therapist and he also confirmed that Dennis is stronger after the plasma exchange therapy. His daily therapy now consists of walking with assistance on the parallel bars. He normally takes four trips down the parallel bars and practices sitting and standing from his wheelchair without the help of his arms. He is still having trouble with his left hip flexor, the muscle that pulls the knee upward. For now Dennis’s quads are doing all the work and once we get the hip flexor working properly his steps will look less like Frankenstein. Dennis is working hard and putting in extra hours after his therapy to concentrate on the hip flexor muscle. I’ve wondered since Dennis’s prognosis how you learn to walk again, and this weekend I learned there are so many movements we do without even thinking about them. Before Dennis takes each step he must make sure to 1) keep your upper body straight, 2) shift your weight to the opposite leg, 3) don’t hyper-extend your knee, 4) keep your hips forward, 5) kick your leg outward. His right leg takes decent steps and we have seen some improvements with the steps on his left leg from Friday to Saturday so I am certain by the end of this week he will be able to take normal size steps with his left leg and start concentrating on walking with minimum assistance.
Tuesday we go back to Mayo for another four to five hour MRI at 5:15pm. Wednesday we follow up with the neurologist at 1:30pm to see if the lesion has gotten smaller and if there is any more inflammation on his spinal cord. Dennis was scheduled for another spinal tap, but he got lucky and the neurologist wants to see the MRI first. Wednesday afternoon Dennis’s doctors at Brooks are meeting to set another estimated discharge date. Dennis and I are very anxious to see if the date will be moved up with the strength gain or pushed back since we spent six days at Mayo. We are on our way to the next phase of recovery and we keep being reminded that "Life is about how you respond to not only the challenges you're dealt but the challenges you seek...If you have no goals, no mountains to climb, your soul dies". ~Liz Fordred
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