Tuesday, 14 October 2008

A positive mental attitude

Jo was hoisted into the chair for breakfast but used the swivel board to get back into bed afterwards. She then did a half stand and swivel to get back into the chair for lunch and the same again to get back into bed afterwards. Great progress and far more than they ever achieved at the local hospital. It must have tired her out though as she was sleeping when I arrived at 15:00.

I helped Jo with a half stand and swivel. I was crap at it, lifting Jo instead of helping her to stand, a failing Jo pointed out to me. Not only is this place better at getting Jo into doing things for herself, it is proving to be adept at encouraging self motivation. Jo said she'd had an interview with the physiotherapist, who had accepted Jo's goal of wanting to walk as a good one. None of the mimsy goals they set at the hospital like '6 hours in the chair', which only served to reinforce the 'we're not sure you'll ever walk again' message. One wonders whether they understand that a large part of physiotherapy is in encouraging a positive mental attitude.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Different strokes...

It has been nearly seven years since Jo suffered a "controlled" stroke whilst undergoing brain surgery to clip the blood vessel that had caused a subarachnoid haemorrhage in 2000. Sadly two successive coilings did not occlude the bleed and so Jo had a craniotomy in August 2008. During surgery the surgeon discovered the coiling had penetrated the rear of the aneurysm, occasioning emergency repair procedures. Consequentially they spent one and a half hours longer in surgery than expected, leading to the right half of Jo's brain forgetting it has to look after the left side of her world.