It's only the first day of my visit here at FINR, but I had to write to convey how impressed I am with AJ's progress since my last visit. Once I mentioned that I would be writing about what I saw, AJ insisted that I write about it tonight, which was actually a concession to his first idea, that I write this blog post while I was still at FINR. What a ham. But he's excited about the progress he's making––as well he should be!––as you can tell from the last two blog posts he's written.
This visit comes over a month after my previous visit, so I'm in a perfect position to see short-term progress, which more frequent visits make difficult to discern.
In speech therapy, AJ practiced speaking, swallowed food, and did inhalation / exhalation exercises. His speaking is much improved since the last time I was here! There are caveats, of course. He sounded great in the morning, but by the end of the day the clarity was gone. This is good, though. It means that his therapists (and his guests) are asking of him as much as they can in a given day. When he's that tired, we really can't ask much more. When it was clear, I could listen to him say a word and think, "That was either 'like' or 'hike,'" instead of thinking, "Well, that could have been anything." I was very encouraged by what I saw. He's not going to be entering any oratory contests any time soon, but he's making marked progress.
In physical therapy, AJ is being asked to do nearly every part of a transfer, except for the all important stand and pivot, which he needs someone there to execute with him. Once AJ was on the mat table, I saw him slowly transition himself from a seated position to the prone position with minimal assistance and guidance. When on his back, he was tasked with rolling onto his left side (the easier of the two directions, because the right side of his body is stronger). Once he had a little practice with it, he could roll to the left unassisted, and the PT even added some resistance so AJ had to work even harder to roll over. He did this for the first time last week, I was told. When AJ was rolling onto his right side, he needed a decent amount of assistance and guidance, but after many, many times, he did manage a very impressive unassisted roll onto his right side. I was motivating him from the sidelines by telling him that since F=ma (Force = mass * acceleration) he needed to really accelerate at the beginning of his roll or it wasn't going to work. The physics nerd in him enjoyed this, and I think it helped.
Then AJ, again largely unassisted, transitioned from prone to a seated position, where he showed off his posture, which has come a long way to really look like the genuine article. He's sticking his chest out (like a small-breasted stripper), and there's no comparison to how he used to sit, when his back was more like the arc of a wagon wheel rather than its current straight as a plank alignment. This is a pretty new development. While seated, AJ was tasked with leaning forward, out of his comfort zone in order to punch a foam ball dangling from an arm stand. AJ went to the extra effort of "chambering" his punches and exhaling on each punch. This is karate 101. He sometimes missed the ball because he wasn't leaning forward far enough, but, on the other hand, what really impressed me was when he did hit the ball and set it in motion, AJ could then accurately punch a swinging target. This requires a fair amount of coordination, timing, and speed. He's moving his arm fast enough and at the correct time in order to hit the ball squarely and keep it in motion. I saw him do this several times, and he seemed to really enjoy it.
AJ had his grip tested In occupational therapy. It was impressive, but I really only mention it because by this point AJ knew I'd be writing this blog post and told me to include this. He now has a PR department, it seems. The handheld device was two metal grips connected by two parallel poles, with a round gage at the top. The averages of three super intense grips by each hand were:
Left Hand 26.666 repeating &
Right Hand 38
When I told AJ that these numbers would mean nothing to his readers and that they meant basically nothing to me, even though I was there seeing how hard he was trying, he asked the therapy student to get last week's numbers. So, by comparison, his previous grip test averages were:
Left Hand: 23 &
Right Hand: 26
Suddenly, those numbers meant something. That's some mighty fine improvement.
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