Merry Christmas!

James came home for five days over Christmas.  He is sure happy to be home.  The day that we were leaving to go over and visit with James and bring him home to visit,  we had an amazing hamper delivered!  What a surprise!  Everything for Christmas dinner plus other food items,  plus gifts and stockings for us all! Our tree has never been so full!  It was the first Christmas since I was a kid that I didn't know what was under the tree!  We brought James' girlfriend with us to Vancouver and she also spent Christmas Day with us.  James was so excited to see her!  The hotel that we stayed in while we visited with James had an IHOP restaurant attached to it.  The food was fabulous!  I think I have a new favorite restaurant!  Too bad we don't have one near home.  We visited with Grampa Cam and Cindy and Paige while in Vancouver.  We had lunch and dinner with them, went to a movie and visited at their home.  It was a great day.  We saw the movie, Frozen.  It was great.  James saw it once already,  but he was super excited to see it with the family!  We travelled home on Christmas Eve with James.  We saw a pod of small dark colored whales on the ferry trip.  We stopped in Nanaimo and had dinner and a visit with gramma Ann,  then drove home.  We spent Christmas Day with James girlfriend, Rae Ann, and Nana came for dinner.  We also went over the Nana's house to see her mini Christmas village that she puts up every year.  We ended the day by driving along candy cane lane to see all the Christmas lights!   James also spent almost the whole day without his chair!  He was 11 hours out of his chair!  He even used his walker to go In and out of Nana's house.  That was quite a bit of walking! We all got super spoiled for Christmas!  We are so blessed to have such awesome friends and family!  

James got a new roommate on Christmas Eve at the hospital.  He is a man in about his 50s.  I hope he is as nice as the last roommate.  I am a little nervous about it.  The experience with the first roommate James had was so horrible!  James' usual doctor is back from hollidays and I look forward to meeting with her next week.  James has been trialling a power chair lately.  He has practiced with it 3 or 4 times now.  He is doing very well with it.  He is very careful,  and I suspect it won't be long before he is able to use it on his own inside the building.  He really enjoys the independence it gives him.  I have been very concerned that he hasn't been using his walker much while he has been there.  It sounds like both his physiotherapist and his occupational therapist will be spending time walking with him with his walker now though.  James had a scope of his throat done again recientely.  They were wanting to see how his naso-pharyngeal port ( a flap that opens and closes between the mouth and nose). Is working and how he is handling eating and drinking.  The port did close nicely a couple of times while he was making an "A" sound,  but it wasn't consistent. I am hoping that it is a sign that it is starting to work.  That port being able to open and close when he speaks is very important to the intelligablility of his speech.  He was able to also swallow a teaspoon of regular fluid as well as he swallows a teaspoon of thickened fluid.  So that is also promising.  He is still a choking risk though,  and still needs to be monitored when eating.

James and I will be going back over to Vancouver on Sunday.  I will stay there until the following Sunday.  It will give me a chance to catch up with his therapists  and his doctor. 

Calmer waters

James has been doing much better the last couple of weeks.  I still think that hie schedule should be busier though.  He does have a couple of new things added to his week.  He has hand class on Tuesday morning and on Tuesday evening and Sunday afternoons he has a speech volunteer working with him.  James usual doctor is back this week too.  I will meet with her after Christmas.  She is familiar with James and his goals,  and I am hoping that she can kick James rehab up a notch!  

James iPad will be replaced this week too!  He will be getting a new speech app on it to try out as well as his old touch chat app.  His replacement iPad is a mini and he is pretty excited about that.  It will be easier to pack around and keep safe!  The occupational therapist is making a pouch for it to go in that will attach to his chair.  

James will be getting another throat scope done tomorrow.  They are going to watch what happens when he eats, as well as when he talks.  His speech therapist wants to also discuss with the doctor if there are any intervention options to help with his speech.  

James now has a the social worker for his program checking in with him almost daily too.  Just to make sure that he is doing okay and that no one is giving him a rough time.  James is becoming more known by other patients and nurses though.  There are quite a few patients who talk to James now and keep an eye out for him!  

James is very excited about coming home for 5 days around Christmas!  His girlfriend has taken time off around that time too, so he is super excited to spend some time with her too! 

Tough few weeks

It has been a tough start for James at gf Stronge.   During the first week,  he got a roommate who was very verbally abusive and intimidating to James.  The roommate then stole James iPad with his communication program on it.  The iPad was retrieved from under the roommates mattress, and a couple of days later they moved James to a new room (across the hall) because James was refusing to go in the room and was sitting in the hallway.  the day after the move his iPad went missing again,  and this time they found the charger in the old roommates drawer,  but were not able to find the iPad.  So poor James has been the last few weeks without his communication program.  I am noticing that he is often just giving up trying to communicate more complex ideas to the nurses.  If it takes too much effort to get his point across he will just give up.  James' new roommate is a sweetheart though.  He is in his 40s and is from Columbia.  He speaks Spanish and now James wants to learn Spanish!  His new roommate was telling me that he is discharging in  by couple of weeks though.  I am nervous about who will be rooming with James next!  

I spent last weekends visit meeting with police about the iPad,  and generally trying to get a clearer picture of the story of the iPad theft.  The hospital won't consider it stolen though,  only missing.  Security says that since no one actually saw the guy steal the iPad it is deflamitory to say it was stolen. He says that even though it was found the first time under the guys mattress,  that doesn't mean he put it there.  The argument would be, what if the guy was framed.  Good grief !  Not sure what the police have been able to do,  and if I wanted a copy of the police report I would have to apply for freedom of information act,  which is a lengthy and expensive process.  It does look like the company that supplied the iPad will replace it for him,  but there are lots of hoops to jump through to make that happen.  I spent this weekend working on paperwork to get the iPad replaced.  I am hoping to have it replaced before Christmas.  

There was a meeting on Thursday to discuss James progress so far.  I caught wind earlier in the week that the talk was to discharge James because James was wanting to go home.  I talked to James' physiotherapist from Courtenay, who wrote an awesome e mail to the new physiotherapist as well as the physio and occupational therapists who worked with James during the summer.  Well,  I think he sufficiently stirred the pot!  When I arrived they were all hopping,  and the doctor filling in for James' usual doctor had given James his cell number, and was communicating with him via texting!  He convinced James to give it a good try and stick around.  A review meeting is now set for January 20th.  At that meeting either a discharge date will be discussed or another review meeting set.  Basically what we heard is that James is working hard and cooperating despite being homesick.  He is using his right hand a lot more,  and I have seen a significant change in the function of his right hand.  His speech is coming along,  he is quite a bit clearer if he plugs his nose.  He is scheduled to have another scope done on the 17 th of this month.  He is also sitting a bit straighter in the last week or so too.  I told them that James needs to be busier too.  When he is bored,  he gets very homesick.

I took James to a follow appointment with the Neuro Opthomologist yesterday.  He saw some positive changes in James eye function in just under 2 months since he saw him last.  He said that on their own each of James' eyes works quite well,  they just don't work perfectly together.  He wants to follow up with more testing in 6 months.  He felt that patching one eye or the other might assist James in some activities where there is still some double vision.  He also suggested tinting the lense of his glasses on his right eye.  That eye is light sensitive since the pupil stays a bit more dialated than the other.  He does not feel that James is a good candidate for surgery since his right eye has multiple issues.