Dana awakens after another fantastic sleep very refreshed. Last night she managed to turn herself without calling out for help...another small milestone. Its funny how the small milestones mean a lot. You can't describe it to anyone to see your child start returning to the same ways as before this operation, is really comforting.
We start the day with organizing ourselves not to miss breakfast, which finishes at 9.30, and manage to get ourselves out the apartment door in time to enjoy another complimentary breakfast at the residence inn. Ollie and Dana both enjoy scrambled eggs and sausages, whilst I eat a bowl of porridge or oatmeal as the locals say. This start to the day will enable me to eat lots of sugar later. The Americans do a lot of things really well and some things we have discovered not so well. Sugar they do well! They must do because you certainly see lots of people who have enjoyed their portions of sugar walking all around. In fact they have enjoyed mine and your portions of sugar also.
We then return to our room to start the day’s activities that are vital for the SDR surgery to be successful. We start to go through the booklet that we have been given which is our SDR rehab bible. It shows us all the exercises we should do and the ones we should not attempt yet. Everything is so well put together; it’s like a step-by-step guide. Fortunately we are not new to these exercises so we perform them with Dana with a reasonable level of confidence.
Its now 11am and we find ourselves in a position where we do not have to be at the hospital for Danas physio sessions until 4pm. It’s sunny outside and the world beckons. We decided to take a short walk, well about 35 minutes to a nearby neighborhood called Lafayette Square.
Those of you that know it will know its to be a fairly well to do urban neighborhood with picture postcard houses and a fabulous park. We arrive in the local high street, well more of a splattering of shops and immediately seek solace from the sun in a coffee shop called 'Perk Coffee". Here comes the first of the sugar indulgences 'Banana Chocolate cake'.
Well all this physio with Dana is hard work.
We return back to our hotel in time to make our daily trip to the St Louis Children’s Hospital to our physio session with Mike.
So what you need to understand is that Mike is known as Mad Mike. It's not my label but I can now only agree with the description. Mike is a lovely chap, I’d say possibly around 50. He wears Hippy beads and is just so full of excitement. He is fantastic with the children’s and really gets the best out of them in their sessions.
Dana starts by telling Mike she's been walking with her walker today for about 12 steps. He responds with a 'Go girlfriend and gives her a high five'. He then hands us a piece of paper from Dr Dobbs telling us that after consultation with Dr Park, Dana's hamstring surgery will now also consist of heel cords.
My heart sinks and a lump appears in my throat. I was not prepared for that. I was ok with the fact that Dana was going to have her Hamstrings done, but heel cords as well. I think Mike notices the change in my stance and bursts into saying that Dana will be so fantastic having
everything done at the same time. She will be able to stand better, taller and also her feet will be more able to support what she needs to do with the heel cord surgery. He also says that Dr Dobbs is as good as Dr Park and he implicitly trusts him. This helps to reduce the anxiousness I'm feeling and I can start to see that it will be good for Dana.
Mike quickly shifts focus again in his own excitable way and tells Dana she is going to walk on her frame. Dana responds that she can walk to the end of the therapy room, about 50 feet away. I look at Mike with in-trepridation, and he looks back at me with those mad eyes...Game on.
Dana gets up on her walker and starts to go, I hold her hips to steady her but she's off.
She's like Ben Johnson on steroids and if anybody remembers the 100 metre Mens final in Los Angeles, where an unknown sprinter called Ben Johnson scraped into the mens 100M finals only to come out on the days of the final to whip the backside off the reigning champion Carl Lewis with plenty of distance in front.
She gets to 40 feet and she's done, she needs to sit.
Dana then announces to Mike she wants to continue the rest of the way. I can tell that Dana is getting tired and I urge her not to overdo it and to focus on her quality of walking not the quantity. She gets back up once again and she's off, determined to get to the end of the room and she does. Fifty two feet is her final distance, and just to think only Sunday she could not walk two steps.
We take her wheelchair into the gym room where Mike wheels her to a machine that's similar to the leg extension machines in the gym. Mike explains that he is going to test how strong her legs are and this in turn will show us how much she needs to work. He gets her unbuckled from her wheelchair and with a confident lift she’s up on the machine. He explains that she is going to play a game and he wants her to kick as quick and hard as she can. He straps her right leg in ready for action and fiddles with the computer to set it up. The computer starts to work and it shows Dana a traffic light system which when turns to Green she needs to kick as fast as she can.
The machine indicates Dana to go and she starts kicking as fast as she can...Mike is more or less jumping up and down telling Dana to kick fast and hard. My god this is hard work, Dana is gritting her teeth and pushing her legs as hard and fast as she can. This is unbelievable, I realize not only is Dana pushing this machine but also actually it dawns on me that she is pushing really fast and with explosive strength. Before SDR Dana could never do this, she had no explosive strength and now she has. I’m amazed and Mike is off the wall with praise and enthusiasm. Dana then repeats this with her other leg which was always the weaker one. By this time she is spent and energy is depleted.
I ask Mike about the weight she is pushing and her informs me that Dana has to be able to support her body weight on one leg, as she will need it for when she is running at school sport days.
Running at school sports days, am I dreaming, did her just say that? I never ever thought I'd here somebody say that about Dana...why would have I, but in this place of magic that's the Children's Hospital of St Louis, dreams can come true.
The session ends and Mike praises Dana saying that she is doing so well. She has amazed us yet again and she just asks if I'm proud of her. I tell her that I'm always proud of her and she is truly fantastic.
I treat her to a well-earned mini pack of pringles for all her hard work.... back tomorrow for another assault on Her body.
No comments:
Post a Comment