Andrew's gym is nearly complete. I picked up his FES (Fundamental Electronic Stimulator) Bike yesterday and his work-out table is nearly complete as well. The bike is amazing. We will hook electronic stimulators to specific areas on his legs and/or arms and back and a current is signaled in a specific sequence which causes his muscles to react and actually pedal the bike himself. It's not an automatic thing that pedals for him. His muscles make it happen. It's great exercise and the repitition is necessary for reorganizing his central nervous system.
I ordered the bike from a company that was conducting a demonstration at a conference held in Phoenix this week. It was a conference about new therapies and medicines available for those with spinal cord injuries. I was lucky enough to be able to go pick the bike up instead of waiting the standard 8 weeks for one. While in the lobby, I was waiting for the company rep to come out and get me to give me the bike . . . I saw a man walking through the lobby. I recognized him to be Patrick Rummerfield. Patrick is the world's only fully functioning quadriplegic. I have had the opportunity to speak with him over the phone and a bit on Facebook, but I'd never met him before. I introduced myself and he remember who me and Andrew were. I was able to speak with him for a moment and it was so inspiring. He truly is walking hope! What an amazing person he is.
We will be completing the remote set-up on the bike on Monday and Andrew will be well on his way. He's very excited and anxious to get going. He was able to get on the FES bikes at Project Walk a lot, and it was amazing how tired they really made him. His muscles really have to work and that can only be a good thing for him and his body.
Andrew is nearly completely off his neuro meds now. He went from beginning of injury being on 2400 mg of Neurontin (Gabapentin) to zero last week. Neurontin is used for nerve pain and basically further keeps you from feeling anything beyond what you already can't feel from being paralyzed. Even though Andrew is paralyzed, he does have annoying feeling and pain in his body. Unfortunately, these meds can hinder what the activity-based excercise does. So far though, the most he's feeling is a tingling and buzzing feeling in his feet and hands. We have also decreased his Baclofen by a lot, and are now going to competely get him off that as well. Baclofen is used to keep him from having so many involuntary spasms. With activity-based excercise, spasms are actually a good thing. They are used to promote movement and are very necessary when doing weight-bearing activities. He is currently on 60 mg a day . . . which is a lot less than the 160 mg he used to take a day. We decrease by 10 mg a week, so in about 6 weeks he'll be free of the Baclofen. His spasms will be crazy, but he says he doesn't care . . . he just wants to be off those meds. He is an amazing person, that's for sure.
We are still waiting for his slide board and his standing frame to come in. Those pieces of equipment are also vital to his program because they are for weight-bearing activity and help to keep his bones dense. Doctor's are amazed at how dense Andrew's bones are for being paralyzed now for over 2.5 years. His density really has not decreased. They attribute that to how much he was in the gym before his injury as well as the activity-based therapy he has received since being injured.
I will keep posting as we progress in the gym and as Andrew begins his home-based program. God is making this happen and we all know there is so much more to come.
God Bless you all,
Joye
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Where We Are Now . . .
It's been forever since we have been able to blog for Andrew, but here we are again. We set the blogging aside for a while because we were going through many changes and regrouping. We've since made many changes and are finally settled and are happy to report we will be blogging on Andrew's progess once again.
We left Cali back in December '09 and relocated to Congress, AZ. It's a very rural area just north of Wickenburg where all of my family live. We would have liked to have gone back to Yuma, however the VA clinic there is just not equipped to handle someone with the level of injury such as Andrew's. We are just about an hour away from the VA hospital here and they have a wonderful Spinal Cord Injury unit there. We have a great house here and are loving how peaceful it is out here in the country. The kids have a horse a quad and a dirt bike to keep them busy and they are loving going to Wickenburg High School (same high school I graduated from).
Back in March, Bobbi (the oldest) got married to Chance Thompson and quickly made me a grandma 6 weeks ago. They had Baby Connor and he is the light of our life. Drew is playing volleyball and is planning on playing basketball, and C.J. is riding his dirt bike and his horse as much as he can. He wants to wrestle and then of course play baseball in the spring.
Recently, an addition was put on to the house which consists of a new (very large) master bedroom, roll-in shower for Andrew, and best of all a new gym for his therapy. This was my dad's project and everything went very smoothly (thanks Dad!). Andrew has two nurses of which actually relocated to this area with us to take care of him. They are like family and we are so blessed to have them. John came with us from Oceanside and Judy came to us from Yuma. John has also been through the Project Walk home training program to give Andrew his therapy here at home. We will be putting an FES arm and leg cycle in the gym as well as a Total Gym slide board, a standing frame, and a big table to work him out on.
Andrew was recently re-evaluated at his annual exam at the VA-SCI hospital in San Diego and has been rediagnosed from a C-2 to a C-3 level of injury. This means his function and sensation levels are getting better. He also no longer has a trachestomy and he has a pretty decent cough. We are able to manually cough him if he's unable to do it himself. His voice is much louder and it's nice that he doesn't have the pain from his trachestomy. We have also worked hard at decreasing his meds. The only controlled med he takes now is Ambien and he's nearly off all his baclofen and nuerontin which control his spasms and nerve pain. These meds counter some of what we are trying to achieve with his therapy. Spasms are actually a good thing with the kind of therapy he takes.
We are going to be using this blog to not only update family and friends of his progress with his therapy, but his nurses and myself are going to use it to journal it so we have a good record. We fill good things are coming and we want to keep track of every single thing. Andrew has gotten unbelievable upper body strength and even a bit of a bicept coming in. His deltoid is very strong and his sensation area is now below is nipples. He wants very bad to get to the point where he can hold Baby Connor. We will be posting video of his excersise and we also want to keep record of how he feels each day with his therapy and not having meds. Please feel free to comment in . . . we will read them to him for support and inspiration. He is so dedicated to his therapy and so excited to have the equipment right here in his own home.
Thank you all for your support and prayers . . . God has been so good to us.
God Bless,
Joye
We left Cali back in December '09 and relocated to Congress, AZ. It's a very rural area just north of Wickenburg where all of my family live. We would have liked to have gone back to Yuma, however the VA clinic there is just not equipped to handle someone with the level of injury such as Andrew's. We are just about an hour away from the VA hospital here and they have a wonderful Spinal Cord Injury unit there. We have a great house here and are loving how peaceful it is out here in the country. The kids have a horse a quad and a dirt bike to keep them busy and they are loving going to Wickenburg High School (same high school I graduated from).
Back in March, Bobbi (the oldest) got married to Chance Thompson and quickly made me a grandma 6 weeks ago. They had Baby Connor and he is the light of our life. Drew is playing volleyball and is planning on playing basketball, and C.J. is riding his dirt bike and his horse as much as he can. He wants to wrestle and then of course play baseball in the spring.
Recently, an addition was put on to the house which consists of a new (very large) master bedroom, roll-in shower for Andrew, and best of all a new gym for his therapy. This was my dad's project and everything went very smoothly (thanks Dad!). Andrew has two nurses of which actually relocated to this area with us to take care of him. They are like family and we are so blessed to have them. John came with us from Oceanside and Judy came to us from Yuma. John has also been through the Project Walk home training program to give Andrew his therapy here at home. We will be putting an FES arm and leg cycle in the gym as well as a Total Gym slide board, a standing frame, and a big table to work him out on.
Andrew was recently re-evaluated at his annual exam at the VA-SCI hospital in San Diego and has been rediagnosed from a C-2 to a C-3 level of injury. This means his function and sensation levels are getting better. He also no longer has a trachestomy and he has a pretty decent cough. We are able to manually cough him if he's unable to do it himself. His voice is much louder and it's nice that he doesn't have the pain from his trachestomy. We have also worked hard at decreasing his meds. The only controlled med he takes now is Ambien and he's nearly off all his baclofen and nuerontin which control his spasms and nerve pain. These meds counter some of what we are trying to achieve with his therapy. Spasms are actually a good thing with the kind of therapy he takes.
We are going to be using this blog to not only update family and friends of his progress with his therapy, but his nurses and myself are going to use it to journal it so we have a good record. We fill good things are coming and we want to keep track of every single thing. Andrew has gotten unbelievable upper body strength and even a bit of a bicept coming in. His deltoid is very strong and his sensation area is now below is nipples. He wants very bad to get to the point where he can hold Baby Connor. We will be posting video of his excersise and we also want to keep record of how he feels each day with his therapy and not having meds. Please feel free to comment in . . . we will read them to him for support and inspiration. He is so dedicated to his therapy and so excited to have the equipment right here in his own home.
Thank you all for your support and prayers . . . God has been so good to us.
God Bless,
Joye
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