Day 73 - Meet with the rehab therapy team

Monday will be the day Daniel moves up to the rehab floor. This in itself is a big achievement for a burn patient. To plan for the event the OT and PTs from rehab met with us and his current therapists to discuss how to best work with Daniel. We met in his room while he was in the tub room for wound care. We reviewed the therapies he's been doing and learned more about the rehabilitation floor.

Up on the 8th floor each patient has a private room with a shower. Up to now Daniel was bathed in the tub room while laying flat, but that's about to change. The shower has a chair that he can sit in or he can stand and nurses will help to wash and clean him until he can do some of the tasks on his own. His day will probably be fairly structured with solid sessions of therapy for PT, OT and ST. Down time will be consumed with short rest periods and time where he will wear his gunslinger, faceplate and such. If he can wear the faceplate and foam wedges during the night then he will have enough time in the day to fulfill his therapy.

We expect that Daniel will be in rehabilitation for up to a month and we hope he's ready to go home by that time. We have two main goals for him to be able to do: be able to go up/down stairs on his own since his bedroom in our old house is on the third floor; be able to feed himself. The therapists will work on these and other skills like dressing, self-care and more range of motion.

There was a snafu with getting Daniel fitted with garments this week, but we've been told that they will come out next week to measure. Then it could take up to a month before they are delivered.

Daniel received wound care today in the tub room. This might be his final visit to the famed tub room. He also had his cast removed and we decided not to put it back on as we didn't think it was getting the stretch results we were trying for. Also it seemed like the nerve block that we installed a few days ago did not work for him this time. While the cast was off Dr. Wi. looked over the graft on his elbow and it looked really good. So we believe all his grafts are healing nicely and we feel he is ready to move off the burn unit and onto the rehab floor. Monday will be a big milestone.