Day 56 - Spring Training

Here's Daniel all decked out in his Broncos gear ready to take a stroll with his OT friends. Yea that's an old Plummer jersey. He's lookin' pretty sporty yes? We got him in the over-sized jersey to trick him into stretching his arms up over his head. (Sneaky). During the walk he had his arm up and around Dawn's shoulder to add a stretch. We're using all kinds of tactics now to get those stretches in.

After this long early morning walk (twice around the 3rd floor or about 930 steps) we returned to his room to sit on his big ball and do some stretching. Just sitting on the big ball is great for his core and balance. His arms don't want to move much so we're all thinking up tricky ways to distract him while moving his arms about. We use a small stress ball to hand to him although we make him reach for it; we gave him gummy bears, but make him turn his head far to the left and right to grab it; some stretching from behind by the OTs; anything to get him moving, stretching and doing more routine tasks. He soon catches on, but we are able to sneak some stretching in before he digs in and stiffens.

Later today we'll have Daniel up for more activities. We've got to build up those muscles. Anything is better than sitting in bed and it will build up his appetite too.
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Daniel had some white chicken chili for lunch - same as us - from the meal train. We also ordered him lunch, but he hasn't shown interest in it - yet. After lunch it was on to puzzles to get those arms moving. He solved several puzzles then asked to be done. We don't let him off that easily though.

Before heading back to bed for a rest we went on another walk around the 3rd floor. Just a few days ago that would have been beyond Daniel's grasp. Now he's finished his third loop around so we are making a lot of progress - even if he's got so much farther to go before he's ready to go home.

Later this afternoon Daniel will go to wound care and we'll probably grab a beer at the campus pub... or maybe we'll take a walk around campus or BOTH. We'll see. After wound care we'll try to stuff more food in him. That's getting more challenging to try to get him to meet his daily calorie intake from eating alone. He's just not eating enough on his own and that's a problem. He's not really doing as well as we'd like with feeding himself. It's fallen on us to feed him and try to coach him on using his hands; it's just that he's resistant to using his arms much to do the eating on his own. Until then we will keep him on his feeding tube overnight as we have all along.