Thursday and Friday in Caregiverville

Don has taken to aquatic therapy like a duck to water. It's an old simile but I can't think of another one that fits any better. Thursday the physical therapist had him in the pool for a half hour laying on his back peddling bicycle style, spreading and closing his legs, kicking like a swimmer and drawing his legs up to his chest and kicking them back out. It's quite amazing to see his stroke neglect leg actually moving so much. For the second half of the hour she had Don standing on his feet doing sideways walking, squats with his back to the side of the pool and some other exercises that works on improving balance. It's quite difficult to talk with Don in the pool where he isn't able to wear his hearing aids and between this session and the last the PT had made drawings and enclosed them in plastic. These visual aids really made a difference. I thought that was a pretty cool thing for her to do.

The physical rehabilitation place we're going to for Don's land and aquatic therapies is sixteen miles out in the boondocks from where we live. On the way home from the place yesterday I missed a turn on a rural road and got lost---sort of. It's hard to get truly lost in a county where all the roads run true north/south and east/west with the north/south roads all numbered in sequence. The east/west roads are mostly named after the lakes they run past. They don't call Michigan the water wonderland for nothing. Lost or not, we ran south as the numbered roads dropped down to where we thought we should cut east for a while. We took one of the few roads that wasn't named after a lake.

That put us on Red Pine Road, a road we'd never been on, and it didn't take us long to figure out why that one road out of a half dozen we'd past wasn't named after a lake. The towering pines along both sides went on for miles and they were so tall they nearly blocked out the sun over head. Red pines are self-pruning and have long lengths of their lower trunks that have no branches and the conifers looked as if they'd been precisely planted six feet apart in rows parallel to and perpendicular back from the straight-as-a-pin road. We figured they could have been part of a post-depression era New Deal/WPA project. Michigan has many WPA "ghosts" lingering about. (The Work Project Administration, under Roosevelt, was designed to overcome the widespread unemployment that nearly destroyed our country back then.) It was neat driving through a piece of history---however the trees got there---as the lowering sun cast a ladder-like pattern across the pavement.

Today I started out down at the YMCA walking on the treadmill. If someone had told me a year ago that I could stand up for a half hour straight---let along walk a half hour on a treadmill---I would have told them they were crazy. Have I said lately how much I love my new knee? Nine weeks out from the surgery and it's the only joint in my lower body that doesn't yell at me, "Jean, you're getting old!" I'm even starting to look like I belong in the gym. Gone are the polo shirts that get too sweaty under the collar. Gone are the wrap-over-the-head earphones. Yup, I'm sporting discreet little ear plugs to watch Ellen or Oprah on the treadmill's build-in TV. I'm also carrying a water bottle and wearing tee-shirts and sweats. The latter attire will be next to go as soon as I figure out where people go to buy those cutesy little workout clothes with the racing stripes up the sides that make you look like you're going faster than you really are.

My afternoon was spent as the Chevrolet dealership getting the oil changed and everything up to snuff for the coming winter months. The heater wasn't working right, the tires needed rotating, all the fluids needed to be checked and topped off, and the computer was telling us that the battery was dead when it's just a spring chicken and was perfectly fine. With all our Blazer issues resolved we finally left the place two-hundred dollars poorer and I had a headache from watching Don bounce off the walls in the waiting area. He had such a good time trying to interact with all the people there and my aphasia decoder ring got a royal workout. Sometimes I'd like to park Don and his wheelchair facing a corner and tell him to "stay!" until I can have two consecutive thoughts of my own.

Jean Riva ©

If it's Thursday, This Must be Aquatic Therapy

Sometimes I think my life is a giant Parker Brothers board game. Roll the dice and move five spaces forward. Draw a card and it tells me to, "Go directly to jail, do not pass Go. Do not collect $200." Then I roll the dice again and I draw a card that says, "Bank error in your favor, Collect $200." When things are going well, why can't we just stay in that groove?

Monday was land therapy with one of Don's new physical therapists and as I suspected before I even met the guy that he is not as good as the one we just lost. That guy was an extraordinarily caring and smart PT. The new guy didn't push/challenge Don to go beyond where he'd gotten to last week. In fact, he allowed Don to dial it down which I know wouldn't have happened if he would have given Don a minute break and then asked him try the task again. For example, last week Don had done five steps up and back down using a standard height step. This week the new PT used a ½ height step and allowed Don to stop at four. Next Monday I'm going to have to step in and coach them both to go beyond where they left off today. I feel like we drew the card that says, "Train stalled on the tracks. No not advance forward."

Tuesday we went to the hearing center to get the verdict on Don's hearing accident on the firing range---to see if the steroids did any good. His hearing did come back a tiny bit but not enough to make us stand up and cheer. The worst of it is that even after turning up his hearing aids, Don is still having a little trouble understanding and the doctor said there could be some nerve damage which sometimes happens with damage due to loud noises. It could improve; it might stay this way forever. Well, crap! He doesn't need that on top of the stroke issues. Upon hearing all this at speech therapy, the professor had Don's student therapist slow things down. "Go back three spaces."

Wednesday we rolled the dice at the dentist office and both came out with good reports and no more appointments for expensive caps or other things that make you think you drew the card that says, "You made a bad investment. Pay the bank half the balance in your account."

Thursday (today) was Don's first aquatic pool therapy at the new location with the new therapist. She does nothing else but work in the water. The pool is a lot larger than the one Don's been using at the other facility but the water is still the therapeutic 92 degree. The whole place made me feel like I was a pizza baking in a brick-lined oven. But the therapist seems to know what she is doing and I didn't get the feeling that she is going to baby Don the way the Monday land therapist did. "Move forward two spaces."

Friday is the bi-monthly fish fry at the old people's club which---my gosh---if I even thought about cutting out of our schedule---which I did---it would be mean we drew the 'divorce card' and I'd have to pay the board game a huge, ugly fine. I had hoped for a quiet day at home. Oh, well, I just drew the 'weary traveler' card.

Saturday is the disability deer hunt! I got a call from the guide yesterday who will be working with Don and he wanted to know how many deer I wanted Don to bring home. I didn't realize that here in Michigan he could get as many as five doe. Holly Mother of Mary, Don better not shoot more than one unless he agrees ahead of time to donate the meat to the hunter's soup kitchen project. I do not want to draw the card of life that says I have to buy a deep freezer to house a bunch of meat I don't want to cook.

The guide said that when they set up the deer blind, they saw seventeen deer milling around the area and he thinks Don's chances of getting one are excellent. The only down side---at least for Don---is that the landowner only wants doe harvested from his property. I understand that's kind of common for people donating land for the disabled to hunt on but who will be charging other hunters to use once the regular firearms season opens. I'll blog Sunday and let you all know how the hunt turns out. Don will have a good time, I'm sure, even if they get rained out and have to hang around the deer camp all day drinking coffee and eating hot dogs. For him, male bonding time has been almost non-existent since the stroke. The hunt is like drawing the much sought after card, "Advance to Go. Collect $200."

Jean Riva ©

Shout it Out!

My husband worked nights his entire adult life and it's still hard for him to get up for early morning appointments. But beggars can't be choosers when you need a doctor's appointment so we were up before the birds came down for their breakfast. We were just walking out the door when the audiologist called and wanted to move our appointment two hours back or two weeks out if that didn't work out. Well, crap! We went for door number one and finally got to see both the hearing doctor and the audiologist. After two and a half hours in their office we walked out with both an audio and a cognitive test under Don's belt and a prescription for a steroid. The bottom line is they don't know if his hearing will return, or not, but if it doesn't come back then they'll turn his hearing aids up at his next appointment in two weeks. God, I can't imagine shouting at him for two weeks!

The doctor, before giving us the prescription, was really starting to tick me off. It seemed like he wanted to hang the hearing issue on a cognitive hanger because of the stroke and he insisted on the cognitive test. So Don was put in a sound proof room where he couldn't read the lips of a person on a microphone who was asking him questions. Anyone who knows anything about Don's language disorders knows he can't come up with most words at will and I was afraid he'd fail the test, but he scored an 80%. The audiologist, who knows Don well---she's been seeing him for five years---sided with me that Don was no different cognitively now than when she saw him three months ago to fit him for his new aids. Finally the doctor explained that the steroids can have some nasty side effects with someone on Coumadin and he didn't want to give them to Don without first making sure the hearing loss wasn't caused by a brain disturbance instead of the mishaps on the firing range last weekend. My blood pressure would have liked it better if he had explained that in the beginning instead of letting me do a slow burn all that time.

After the appointment ended, we just barely had time to make it to the physical therapy building on the other end of town for Don's aquatic pool session. However, after seeing the nasty cut on Don's arm they decided it was too big and bloody and they'll have to while until it scabs over for him to get in with all the pool chemicals. He cut his neglect arm yesterday on the metal edge of a table the Mexican restaurant. Ouch! It's an inch and a half long and over a half inch wide, sliced the skin right off. Other than that, physical therapy went well. The PT spent most of the time with Don on a table and having him doing a variety of leg movements with the PT's help. It was hard stuff even for someone who hasn't been sitting in a wheelchair for the past 7 ½ years. But Don hung right in there---red face and all. People on the next block could probably hear me shouting out "Breathe, Don breathe!" in his ear.

Jean Riva ©

Old People on the Move...

Anyone who thinks that old people don't do anything but sit at home feeding the birds and hoping a telemarketer will call so they'll have someone some one to talk to should follow us around for while.

Yesterday was one of Don's blood lab and physical therapy days. After 7 1/2 years in a wheelchair, we were lucky to get his doctor to write a prescription to try aquatic therapy. The goal is not so much to get him walking again but to get him stronger so that he doesn't lose his ability to transfer on his own which has been on a downhill slide lately. If he loses that then life as we know it would change drastically. Don's only been to three therapy sessions but already I can see a difference. Yesterday, though, was rather comical due to Don's hearing issues caused by going to the riffle range over the weekend. I had to keep my lips within inches of his ear to repeat the instructions given by the PT. Thankfully we were able to get an appointment at the hearing center for tomorrow. I'm losing my voice from shouting.

After dropping Don back home this afternoon, I barely made it to the YMCA before the working people filled up the place. After a little treadmill and biking around and wishing I could be buff like some of the young ones in the place I was back home to get dinner.

This morning, before Don got up, I was back to the Y for an arthritis class in the pool. After a bone density test this summer, I was told I have the backbone of a twenty year old and the hips of an eighty year old. Yikes! So I've joined all the other out-of-shape seniors in the neighborhood who are trying to hold off the marching of time with a few do-se-do's in the pool. Gosh, that class was fun starting with the first bars of "The Bugle Boy from Company B" to the last notes of Jimmy Durante singing, "It's important to make someone happy, make one person happy, and you will be happy, too."


After my class I was back home to help Don in the shower so we could go off to one of his twice weekly speech classes. He's been going since his stroke (private pay) to a speech/language pathology clinic at a near-by college.

On the way home we stopped for what was suppose to be a quiet little meal at a Mexican place. A tipped-over full glass of water, a salsa decorated shoe, an orange stained pant leg, a bloody arm and a thousand napkins later---oops!---I was ready to come home and chili out with a few Planters peanut butter cookies and a cup of Constant Comment. Some moments just call for some comfort food. And Don? He's asleep in his Lazy Boy. Our old-people-on-the-move routine worn him right out today.

Jean Riva ©

Detailed descriptions of Don's physical therapies can be found at 'My Yahoo 360 Page' linked in the column to the right. Once there, click the tag cloud 'aquatic therapy.' Documentation of several years of past speech classes can be found at the 'Aphasia Decoder's Diary' also linked in the column to the right.

Sight-in Day - Disability Deer Hunt

My husband, Don, went on Michigan's first disability deer hunt last year along with seventeen other wheelchair bound guys---oops, make that sixteen guys and one gal. Between them, they harvested 7-8 deer. My husband was not one of them, but it didn't matter. He had a wonderful time doing the male bonding thing out in the woods and at the 'base camp.' In the 7 ½ years since his stroke, it was the first time he'd spent more than an hour away from me.

This weekend was the sight-in day for the second annual disability deer hunt that is sponsored by one of the chapters of the Wheelin' Sportsmen, NWTF. This time they have twenty-eight wheelchair bound guys signed up. At theses sight-in days, the volunteers help the disabled hunters find just the right combination of gun, tripod and other disability friendly aids to make it possible to hunt from either a blind or an all-terrain vehicle, using a special 'standing vehicle' license. The volunteers who put this well organized hunt together really understand what it means to life-long hunters to return to the woods. I can't say enough good things about these men and women.

My husband will be using a blind on hunting day that will be set up and ready for him at day break. Along with the blind comes a volunteer guide who helps him handle the gun, get to and from the blind and whatever else he'll need during the day. The blinds even have special wood floors to make it easier for the wheelchairs. If a deer is brought down, the guide calls a tracking team who goes after the animal, field dresses it, and brings it back to a brag pole at base came. Eventually another set of volunteers gets all the animals to a processor. All of this is free of charge to the disabled hunter. Later on I'll post contact information for the sponsoring organization. They're nation wide with many state chapters.

Unfortunately, as good as the volunteers are, no one made sure that Don's ear plugs were properly put in and he came home with signification hearing loss from the two hours on the shooting range. Monday I have to call the audiologist to see what can be done. Hopefully, just turning up his brand new hearing aids will do the trick. In the caregiver world, it's always two steps forward and one step back. As caregivers we want and need to trust others with our care recipients but then something like this happens and you're reminded of why that is SO hard to do....

Jean Riva ©