Finals week at Rusk

According to one of the doctors, we are in what is often referred to as finals week. Everything is focused on the things we need for home. I brought pictures from our visit that show various things about the house. In OT this morning, we started filling out the paperwork for the equipment we'll need: a wheelchair, a walker, a commode, at least. Tomorrow we'll focus on more on skills, especially transfers on carpet (which were one of the harder things).

It PT, we totally focused on skills. I showed Fred a few pictures and we discussed our strategy for the back door. He pretty much agreed with what we used on Saturday and offered a few helpful suggestions. We'll need to build a step for back there, but I think we can handle that.

This morning, at my suggestion, we worked on sideways and backward walking on carpet. That's pretty hard stuff, but it's how we get into the bathroom. I showed him diagrams of our bathrooms at home, and we talked about how to access them. Linda has the hardest part in all of this though. She has to do the walking.

This afternoon, we put Linda on the floor and talked about how you get up after you've ended up there. In general, the goal is to not get onto the floor. But the world isn't a perfect place, so you realize it's going to happen sometimes and you practice for it. In fact, Linda missed a transfer yesterday and ended up sitting on the floor, so the lesson felt a lot more pertinent to her today. She can't get up by herself, but we know generally how to do it, and as she gets stronger that will change. For the meantime, she shouldn't ever find herself alone on the floor anyway.

After the floor, we walked over to the "curb" they have and practiced stepping up. That's the skill for the back door. We walked back to the wheelchair when we were done with the curb, because we wouldn't want to go soft on Linda. Oh yes, she had to wheel herself back to the room at the end of the therapy (building those arms for the carpet). She's quietly reading a book at the moment, lucky to be awake.