Thursday, 4 December 2008

Jo lifts her left leg

When I walked in today at 13:55 Jo was asleep in her bed, despite her physiotherapy session being due in five minutes. I woke her and she raised her left leg up by pulling it towards herself, raising it at the knee.

"Do that again." I said, whereupon Jo raised her right leg in the same manner. "Not that leg, the left one." I admonished. At this Jo raised her left leg. "So you can do it!" I exclaimed.

"Yes." replied Jo with a quiet smile.

During physiotherapy we tried transferring Jo into the car. As I suspected the rotunda was a non-starter so we used the sliding board to help Jo shuffle from the chair to the car. With the suspension and passenger seat at their lowest setting and a pillow between the chair and the bodywork to protect the paintwork, transferral was relatively easy, positioning the sliding board under Jo and her right leg in the footwell. At the right moment the assistant physiotherapist  helped Jo get her left leg in the footwell and the job was done.

Transfer out of the car proved easier, effected by raising the car's suspension and passenger seat to their highest level and moving the seat back up. Then, with two "hops", Jo was able to get back in the chair. On the first attempt the assistant physiotherapist placed Jo's left leg out of the car and helped Jo to position it thereafter. The second run-through saw Jo position her left leg herself after it had been placed out of the car.

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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.