Wednesday, 3 June 2009

A new strategy

Jo had a recliner chair delivered today, enabling her to elevate her footrest and potentially to lift her forward into a standing position.

They also fitted a bed elevator which works mechanically to raise her to a sitting position.

The physiotherapists came and explained their strategy, which is to have two sessions a week; one practising manipulation; as conducted yesterday and the other practising walking. The collaborative care sessions previously held are replaced by Jo performing the exercises I have described in a previous entry.

All this is because they see Jo as making progress and to focus Jo on taking a more active role in her own rehabilitation as she becomes more mobile.

They then proceeded to get Jo to practise walking in the hallway, four steps forward and four steps back, using the banister for support. This was repeated twice. Jo was stepping well with the left foot going forward but dragging it going back. Conversely she was better at transferring her weight onto her left leg when going backward, which suggests it is largely a matter of confidence.

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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.