Day 46 Update, Diane

A lot of things have been happening for Scott since he's whole again.
He's eating real food! No more nasty looking tube feeding liquid. Let's see what has he had: toast, bagels, turkey, potatoes (mashed & roasted red), applesauce, pudding, pancakes...his favorite things are the milkshakes with protein, chocolate, strawberry & vanilla all are great. He has atleast 2 a day. How fun it that, wanting high calorie foods so tasty. He also drinks about 4 cranberry juice/lemon lime mixes a day. It's like a cranberry lime aid...Oh so tasty!
As long as he can maintain good calorie intake through the weekend, he'll be getting the feeding tube out tomorrow. No problem there, now that he can eat, I'm having fun getting him to eat all he can.

His PICC line will be coming out today. I don't know if we ever talked about this line. He's had it since April 9th. It's basically an IV going into the major vain that stops right before the heart. They are able to draw blood from this very easily and give all IV meds. Unlike the begining, it is not being used much now so they are taking it out. Because any thing going into the body is a source of infection and if they can take it out they do. YAY all the tubes he's had for so long are finally coming out.

Today Scott got OKed leave the room in a wheelchair! Occupational Therapy came in did some stretches with him and took him up to their Acute rehab center to look around. While we were up there Physical Therapy took him to walk down the hall and then work on posture with the parallel bars and a mirror. He is moving so much better now that his head is whole. He is still shaky and it is very hard to stand up straight but he is improving everyday.
He has not sustained much if any at all, cognitive damage from this injury. This is a huge! His biggest challenges will be his body. He does have a slight difference in strength on the left side. But it is minimal from what the doctors told us to except. He also has to recover from being in bed for 5 weeks. He has lost a lot of muscle mass and although he is stronger than I expected, he still tires easily.

With so many steps forward, I can feel the end of our hospital stay coming soon. Hopefully we'll have that info early this week. We have to wait for the doctors, insurance company and rehab centers to see his progress this weekend, get an OK to advance, and find out where that will be :)
Diane