Monday, August 9, 2010

Rehab Rocks!

Rehab Rocks when you have a really nice therapist! Abi has 2 therapists who take great care of her. They push her but not too hard. I was going to post some pics but my internet is not cooperating.
Anyhow, Abi did so awesome today! She was given 2 goals for walking one was about 30 ft away and the other was about 60 ft. away. Abi surprised us all and walked about 150 ft. The greatest part is that she did it with the proper technique, not putting any weight on her left leg.

Earlier she walked herself to the restroom twice and also asked if she could get up and brush her teeth by herself. She has to use a walker, but it gets her mobile. I tell her baby steps when she gets frustrated and then when she is doing good I encourage her to do more.

Movement is difficult with the left leg. She has lost a lot of muscle mass in the right leg as well and can not lift her leg straight up. It goes to the inside and she can not control it. It will take some time to get her muscles back to normal.  Also it takes a ton of core muscles to lift legs and move them the way she is supposed to. And her core muscle in her abdomen has been cut through and is not healed yet. It makes things really difficult to deal with when you have spinal and pelvic injuries on the back and a large incision on the front.

No weight bearing on the left leg allowed. No moving with out a brace on. She must walk with a walker which requires her to bear weight on her arms in turn causing pain in her front incision. She really can't win either way she looks at it.

Today she did not eat much, by that I mean she ate 2 small potato chips. She has a feeding tube at night and they keep it turned up to 70. I am convinced that the feeding is what causes her vomiting at night. Which in turn causes her to be nauseated for most of the morning and not want to eat for the entire day. She has absolutely no appetite what so ever. We can not entice her with anything. She could care less. We have pretty much tried everything. I think if they let her go with out the tube for 1 night she would have the desire to try something. For all of her progress, I am most worried about the eating. I am worried that she will develop an eating disorder from this ordeal. When I say that she eats nothing I really mean nothing.
In the last 22 days she has had 6 bites of apple sauce ( weeks ago when they were doing speech therapy), 4 baby bites of chicken last night , 2 small potato chips today, and a bite of graham cracker last week. If there was anything else last week I was not made aware of it.
Physically she is coming along which is a huge praise! I just wish she would start to eat. She needs to eat in order to fully recover.

I promise more pics soon! Just as soon as my internet works properly!

4 comments:

Ann said...

Hi Abi -
Just checking in on your blog to see how you are progressing. I've stayed away since I have been sick [cold/respiratory thing -- you don't need anything I have.. I didn't think I "needed" it either.]
If I am sufficiently recovered I'm having knee surgery next week [not at the U or we could meet in rehab].

Have Stace give you a hug for me [germfree!]
~ann m

Megan Rasmussen said...

You're a beast, Abs. ;P

Natasha and livia said...

Thats so awesome to hear abi!! So what if they had a T-bone steak in front of ya would ya eat it!!!lol j/k I love you you better eat something girly!!lol

Dad said...

Sorry Tash, but she likes Chicken. I told the nurse that I was taking her to Texas Roadhouse when she got going. The nurse ask her what she liked at TR and she just said "chicken". I thought the nurse was going to fall over she was laughing so hard.