Wednesday evening update

HOLY COW!! What a good day! :)

Mom had some appetite back at breakfast and by 11:00 we were loading her into the van and on our way to St. Luke's in Cedar Rapids.  Like I said before the ride up went even better than I had hoped it might and we didn't have to stop or rest or deal with any problems on the way.

We knew that once she got here she would have 3 hours of therapy each day, but I was surprised that they went for three hours today.  She has an occupational therapist, Erin, and a physical therapist, Melissa, who will meet with her every day for about and hour and a half each. (See below for her schedule)

Today the therapists evaluated her skill level and we were all so impressed with what she could do.  She has great movement and strength in her arms to reach and stretch.  When she moves or stands, she has someone near her just in case, but she was able to stand, move to bed, sit and lie down again without much assistance.  She also got some time walking between two parallel bars for support, but she was much more sure on her feet today.  Awesome awesome awesome.

Her schedule for tomorrow is:
9:00 Activities for Daily Living (getting ready for the day)
9:30 break
10:00 Physical Therapy (walking, stretching, standing, sitting -- preparing to watch Hawkeye Basketball games :)
10:30 Occupational Therapy (bathing, dressing, shopping...)
11:00 Speech Therapy (her speech is fine, but this will also work on memory, puzzles and other mental skills.  We will have to keep Phil away so he doesn't just solve all the puzzles for her :)
11:30 Break
12:00-1:00 Lunch
1:00 Physical Therapy
1:30 Occupational Therapy
2:00 Recreational Therapy (Fun stuff.  I saw some people playing dominoes today, others on a computer.  They also say there is a garden around here she can play in during this time)
2:30 Physical Therapy

Then from 3:00 on she has some down time.  I have asked her about visitors and we are going to bring people to see her slowly so she can still rest, but she is much more ready for visitors now.  She is allowed visitors any time including during therapies, and they said it is nice to have that extra encouragement during that time also.  However the evenings will be the least structured time and maybe the easiest time to work visitors in.  Let me know if you are interested in visiting and we are working on keeping it to a couple people at a time for now.

Thank you for your prayers.  We spend a lot of time praying for improvements, and it was nice to see so much easy to notice progress today.

I'll let you know how our first full day goes tomorrow!