Day 70 - Wednesday February 22, 2012

Yesterday Bridgett's therapy sessions went well.  We love her occupational therapist Kasey!  He's just awesome.  Bridgett had improved over last session, which is always great!  After doing some reading, they did quite a bit with the Dynavision, which is an electronic board, pretty large, maybe 6' X 6' that has buttons that light up. It is run by a computer, apparently with different tasks that can be assigned.  Bridgett is supposed to find the lit up button (red when lit) and push it to turn it off.  Basically she did good in her narrow field of vision, but the longer they worked the better she did in a larger field.  It helps train the eyes to track, among other things.  He said we will spend more time doing it.  I thought back to Bridgett trying to do this in rehab with Rebecca.  She did SO much better now, probably because of the glasses mainly, but also, she is becoming more aware all the time.  I was just thinking how surprised everyone will be to see her when we head up to see Dr. Speed on the 6th of March!  I like those kinds of surprises!  During speech therapy Bridgett again did really well.  They asked her a list of yes and no questions.  I always hated these at rehab, because they could be answered differently depending on, well, whatever.  I can't think of a particular instance, but I can from yesterday.  For example....does a phone ring?  Bridgett qualified it as yes, if people are calling.  Are elephants big?  Yes, except if they are babies.  Funny!  So, she explained her qualifying.  I made a comment regarding this to the speech therapist and she said, yes, some questions can be answered differently and when a person explains the qualification it shows a higher level of thought.  Interesting!  Lisa (the experienced therapist) said that she thought that there is a lot going on up there (pointing to Bridgett's brain) and that we just need to channel ways to access it all.  The speech therapist internist gave Bridgett a page of things to go home and read and said we'd have to just do it verbally.  However, Lisa went and copied it and enlarged it so that one page fit on four pages and Bridgett could read it then.  Cool!  I said I don't think that large print book are large enough print and they agreed.  Anyway, everything was good, except the ride up and back.  I called the neurosurgeon and told the nurse that she was having neck pain.  She called back and left a message to have Bridgett wear the soft collar as needed and to take pain reliever, but not Advil. She said Advil interferes with the healing of bone and so to use Tylenol.  Arrianne said WHAT!  Why didn't anyone tell me that when I had that broken sesamoid bone that wouldn't heal.  They all knew I was taking Advil!  Maybe they just discovered this or maybe it just depends on your doctor.  One thing I have learned, that nurses all do things differently and all have different opinions on what is best.  And I was surprised at how often saw doctors ask nurses what they thought was the best thing.  So, anyway, there's always going to be different opinions I guess.