Thursday, 8 January 2009

Further physiotherapy assessment

Jo got up at 09:00, and made her own breakfast, aided by the collaborative care team.

We went to CICC for a physiotherapy session. Getting in the car gets better every time but we had trouble getting out at CICC, with Jo confused between left and right and pushing in all the wrong directions.

The physiotherapist did some further assessment and Jo failed a neglect test significantly, unable to detect touch or pressure on the left foot with her eyes closed. This is the same as the left side visual neglect, if she looks or has her attention drawn to an object she can see it but if she simply looks forward she fails to perceive objects on her left side in the peripheral vision space. That is an improvement from not being able to see things to her left at all so we must believe things are progressively improving.

We did have a good session though. Jo was able to exert some considerable pressure with her left leg against an object, in this case the physiotherapist, which she did several times and she also managed to move her leg to the right and hold it there. The latter took some effort but she did manage it.

The physiotherapist was very good, explaining what she was doing and why and, at the end of the session, she asked Jo to recap what she had done, which is important as Jo does forget and every positive step needs constant reinforcement.
Posted by Unknown at 10:41

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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.