Regaining lost ground

Jo began the arduous process of regaining the ground she has lost over the last three months dealing with the infection in her cranioplasty wound.

It was not easy and the effort physically drained her but she managed to walk from her bedroom to a point halfway down the hallway before exhaustion prevented her from walking any further.

She was not walking as well as before and required assistance placing her left foot but we were all heartened by how much she has rebounded in such a short space of time.

It's been weighing on my mind...

... and even more so on Jo's mind, both figuratively and literally, this hole in her head. The stitches were taken out today and hopefully the year-long saga of this is over. The wound looked well-healed and we can only hope this particular episode is over and a weight has been lifted from Jo's mind, body and soul.

Inspiring thought for the day.

"The body posture is a physical reflection of a state of being - mentally, emotionally & physically If you want to talk to body parts, you better start with the heart." - Karen Rohlf from Dressage Naturally,

It strikes me this applies equally to human beings.

Left, right, left…

When Jo first began the long process of recovery from this she had a bas case of neglect, where she did not see things to her left and was generally unaware of the left side of her world. Indeed there wasn’t a left side to her world. This was something I now realise was manifesting itself before the operation. Frequently I would puzzle over Jo’s placement of pictures on the wall, they wouldn’t be centred but placed far over to the right.

As she began the process of recovery the first thing to return was the visual aspect, with objects on her left slowly coming into view, sometimes with prompting but increasingly spontaneously. What was slower was the orientation of her body. When she was in the recovery hospice she would almost always lean to the right and be unaware she was doing so. That improved once she came home and she has been sitting in her chair quite upright and centrally since early last year.

Lately I have observed that, when she falls asleep in the chair she leans far over to the left, a complete reversal from those early days.

Yesterday the physiotherapists came for a re-evaluation of Jo since the problems with her head wound forced her to abandon all physiotherapy. They too found that she was actually placing more weight on the left leg than the right, causing some pain and affecting her ability to balance.

We shall have to se what the consultant neurologist makes of this when he examines the progress on the sutures in her head wound.

New hope

Jo underwent surgery to suture close the hole in her head today. Despite a nail-biting day, with surgery being postponed until 15:30, the procedure seemed to go well with no complications.

After recovery she was brighter and more alert than I expected and ravenously hungry as well she might be, having been nil by mouth since the previous evening.

Her vigorous chewing on the sandwiches that broke her fast did aggravate the wound such that it bled, so I left her for the evening not entirely free of anxiety.

Yet that anxiety is mingled with the hope that this somehow, in some ineffable way, signals a new dawn. The previous night Jo eschewed the rotunda to transfer from the wheelchair, electing to stand and step and today I observed her move her left hand from the wrist, the first time I have seen her do this. Let us hope these are signs of an early spring for her.

A Stitch In Time

We saw a consultant neurosurgeon about the hole in Jo's head. The first approach will be to abrade the edges of the wound, removing the hard scar tissue that has formed there, and suture the hole closed.

Although he could offer no guarantees this would work it is preferable to a graft as wounds heal better from below.

The concern is that an infection may be hiding on the titanium plate. If that proves to be the case the plate will have to be removed, replacing it with a new sterile one once the wound has proven to be clean.

Let us hope the stitches are in time to save Jo from more surgery further down the line.