4/16

This past week of having Dad back at home has been going GREAT.  I swear he's doing better now than at any point so far in his recovery.  The most recent hospitalization has been a mere bump in the road, his motivation and attitude are so fantastic.  He's home and really enjoying life - sitting on the front porch drinking coffee, catching up with filing and reading, weeding my garden, and playing with the kids.

He was prescribed outpatient PT, OT, and speech therapy.  But out of all three, he really only needs the OT because it addresses his vision impairment and left hand strength/dexterity.  He's only had two sessions so far and already showing nice improvement.  They tested his strength in both arms, hands, and feet and he's definitely still a bit weaker on the left.  But despite that he still tested above average for his age in all areas.  They're working on his left hand dexterity a lot too with complicated stuff that even I would have a hard time doing with my left hand, pretty soon he'll be ambidextrous!  And they have special vision-training machines to help strengthen his peripheral visual field, which is awesome.  His left peripheral vision has definitely been steadily improving though.  At first he had a pretty significant left visual field cut.  Now it's mostly just the extreme left side and bottom of his periphery that seems to lag behind.  We have an appointment scheduled with Dr. Bytoff next month, a neuro opthamologist to follow up more in-depth with the vision and find out when he's allowed to drive again.

He really doesn't need the PT, but I think he'll end up going a few more times.  It's nice for working on balance and equilibrium, but he's plenty strong and agile enough.  They gave him clearance to go back to the gym so it's just a matter of time until PT discharges him from their services.

He had speech therapy for the first time today and he's already been discharged from their services.  Evan, the same speech therapist from last time, said he got out his absolute hardest tests to use on my dad.  He said he was really excited about these tests because he never gets to use ones that are this challenging, they are designed to be taxing for even the most "cognitively-gifted".  A.k.a. They're supposed to be really hard even for the smartest of the smarty-pants.  And let me tell you - they were HARD.  Like, seriously really really hard.  It was like the mental olympics or something, I couldn't keep up.  Needless to say my dad did excellent and Evan said he didn't need to see him again.

So that's the latest update!