Bill, Fri. Oct 18: good transfer; progress

Yes, he had a good transfer. And to PROVE he was excited:

As I posted on Facebook, an odd combination, but the Giants PJ's were warm for a cool morning. Cousin Regan said, "Every day is a great day to wear Giants gear." Lots of other comments and encouragement poured in!

Everyone involved on his new team does their own assessment. He saw two doctors: one is the intake doctor, she did a thorough review; the other will be his team doctor, and he just introduced himself for now. During the intake, she did just a few cognition tests. "What year is it? What month is it? How are an apple and an orange alike?" He said they are both round (my first thought was they are fruits -- both acceptable answers). "How are the Mona Lisa and a symphony alike?" Ayn and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows, stumped, but Bill answered, "They are both works of art." Oh.

Speech therapy had him move his tongue in all directions, repeat some weird sounds, cough. She brought his lunch and watched how his whole coordination, movements, swallows worked (meatballs and spaghetti).

Physical therapy and occupational therapy (PT and OT) observed movements. They had him do a slide board transfer  from chair to bed, but completely different from what he had done before. Instead of moving toward his strong side, where he would scoot and pull himself, he moved toward his weak side. He couldn't pull, and the intent was to have him lean away from where he was going, get the weight off the butt, and push himself along. Another new instruction was "head down," which also gets the weight off the chair. When the transfer was complete he was lying down, OT said, "You're pretty tall."

PT came back later to do more specific muscle assessments. For the first time, I saw that he has another movement in his left leg. The first movement had been a lift, if you remember the video. Now he can also pull the knee up, and has pretty good side-to-side movement. We hope next will be some ankle flexing and toe wiggles. But I was surprised to see he has no feeling in the left leg. When I've seen him being assessed, they would brush each leg and ask, "does the left leg feel the same or less?" When he said "less," he didn't say "I don't feel it," and I think he didn't realized there was nothing, because he was seeing the touch.  During this assessment, she had him close his eyes. Overall it means there is a safety issue, where he could twist his leg/knee/ankle the wrong direction, or he could rub against something rough.  He will need to watch what he is doing when he moves, and we will have to be the backup protection.

Saturday will be busy for him! I won't be there, but Ayn promises to text a lot. I can compile/edit her comments into a post.