Ponoka November 8th, 2014

Winter is arriving here in Ponoka this weekend.  It has been a beautiful fall,  but the snow started falling this weekend.  We did all our shopping and I gassed up the van yesterday,  so the plan this long weekend is to stay warm inside!

James had a great time at Halloween.  There was a Halloween dance on the Wednesday evening before Halloween,  and James dressed up in his usual old costume.  It is a freaky death costume with glowing eyes.  He loves it.  The dance was great.  Lots of fun.  James got out there and danced In His chair a few times and he danced one song with me helping him, out of his chair.  Most of the therapists dressed up,  and each group of therapist dressed in a theme. James' thrapists were all characters from the game, Clue. One of the other  therapist groups were all muppets,  and the teachers in the classroom were all Star Trek characters.  It was fun.

James has been doing fantastic at speech.  He is still difficult to understand,  but way better than he was!  His speech therapist also feels that he is now a good candidate for palatal surgery.  They would add some bulk to the back of his palate so that he can close the nasopharyngeal port ( the space between your nose and mouth at the back of your throat) with less effort.  This will really help with his speech clarity.  

James has a discharge date being talked about now.  They are talking about just before Christmas.  So we would probably head back on the 19 th or 20 th of December!  There are a few glitches though.  All the supports that I fought so hard to get started back home for James,  have been completely cancelled!  I was told that we have to start at the beginning and go through the application process all over again.  It took me a year of nagging and fighting to get the supports going last time!  If we can't get this sorted out before we go home,  I may have to quit my little job on the bus to stay home.  The social worker here, is going to help by seeing if we can appeal the decision they made to totally drop him from the funding.  Nothing is ever easy.  

Ponoka October 7, 2014

James now has a private room.  He was having a tough time having a roommate.  His roommate swore sometimes,  never at James though.  Nice kid,  just occasionally swore.  James gets quite annoyed at swearing and was not happy.  He is much happier in his own room.  There have been quite a few people leaving to go home,  and there are quite a few empty rooms right now.  

James' speech is coming along really nicely!  We had the sister missionaries over for dinner this weekend,  and James was able to carry on a conversation with them without my help!  It was awesome!  It did help a little that they know finger spelling,  but they didn't really have to rely on it.  They understood most of his speech.  There is a sister in our ward in Lacombe who communicates through finger spelling,  so there are actually quite a few people who know the ASL alphabet from her.  

James is doing well in physio too.  He is practicing stepping over things and balancing with an obsticle course.  The physiotherapist helps by holding on to his waist for support and he has to reach down and pick things up,  walk on a balance beam on the floor,  jump on a mini trampoline and step on and over different things.  His balance is definitely improving,  just slowly.  Last night James took his walker and he and I walked out to the main hallway and he got a root beer at the vending machine.  He put the change in and reached down and got the pop can out himself.

James made a really nice little change purse in leather works.  He is very proud of it.  He has also been loving getting out on the recumbent trike at the center while the weather is still good.  

We went with the church youth, to the Lacombe corn maze a few weeks ago.  It was so much fun!  They have farm animals there and there is a little track with some pedal powered tractor/ bikes.  James loved them!

James has been working on his paragraph writing while working through a workbook in his school time. I was pretty proud of his paragraph he wrote about his rehab...these are his own words...

Ponoka September 6, 2014

James is excited to be getting a new roommate at the center next week!  He will likely have the room to himself for a few days until his new roomie arrives. The new fella is 17,  so James is hoping that he will have some similar interests.  His last roommate was in his 60s so James is happy to have a young roommate!

There is another young man from BC on the unit next to James unit.  He is at a similar level to James!   Last weekend James and I met up with him and his mom and had breakfast at A&W.  It was very nice.  

Physio now has James walking with the therapist helping on his ribs or hips from behind,  while the assistant helps James carry a laundry basket with weights in it!  His balance is slowly but surely improving,  but I am not sure that he will be walking independently by the time we go home,  I am hopeful,  but I think it will depend on how long they let him stay.  The biggest hurdle he has to walking independently is his balance.  

We had a group conference a few weeks ago.  The team is planning on asking for an extension of 2-4 months.  James' four month funding will end at the end of October,  and if they get the extension,  that will put him to the end December or February.  We will see if he gets another extension after that.  

In recreation therapy James painted another ceramic dragon in his ceramics class, and now he has moved to working on a leather change purse in leather works.  He also sometimes goes for bike rides on the three wheel bike,  and I have started taking him to the pool two evenings a week.

Speech has added an assistant working with James,  and he is also part of a speech group.  Some days he has an hour of speech time,  some days up to two hours!  

 

The last batch of resumes I put out were very successful.  Out of 6 resumes,  I got call backs on 4!  I did take a job at a hotel,  but it caters to a pretty rough crowd, and after 3 days I decided that it wasn't for me.  I ended up getting a job as an assistant on a special needs bus,  with the same company I worked for back home!  They just transferred my files!  It is different in that it is all very high functioning kids.  They mostly have behavoural issues.  It is going well though.  The driver picks me up outside the apartment and drops me back off after!  Spoiled or what !  

I am excited to be able to see Mark next month!  He is going to come out for our anniversary.  We haven't seen each other since James and Sarah and I left in June!  He is going to drive out and pull our trailer back home.  I was hoping to sell it out here,  but it is the wrong time of year.

Ponoka August 9, 2014

James is now making his own breakfasts at the center during the week.  Physio is walking him to lunch,  and I go and walk him to dinner.  I am finding that I am understanding his speech more,  and his balance is getting better.  In physio they are working on strengthening his core when he walks.  They are awesome at keeping things interesting and thinking outside the box.  Sometimes James walks on the treadmill.  He has a harness on so he doesn't have to worry about falling,  and they have him walk,  while holding a badminton racket and swinging at rags that they throw to him!  Also twice  a week when there is a physio assistant working with him too,  they walk with a walking pole.  He is getting better at it, and they are able to give him a little less support each time.  Yesterday he got to try out their recumbant trike.  It has two wheels in the front and one in the back.  He did very well and they said that they are totally comfortable taking him outside with it next time.  James has painted a ceramic dragon in recreation therapy and is working on another one!  

We moved out of the trailer and into an apartment last weekend!  I got our furniture at the thrift shop.  I sure found some great treasures!  We still need mattresses, but I am planning on going into red deer today and looking at foam mattresses at Jysk.  They are comfortable and much cheaper than a regular mattress! Next week I am planning on getting out and job hunting again.  I am hoping that I will have more luck now that I have a local address and phone number.  

Ponoka July 10/2014

We have been in Ponoka for a couple of weeks now.  James is settling into the brain injury center nicely, and his therapies are really getting going.  All the therapies here really work together, very much more than they did in Vancouver.  Some of his therapists will be walking with him with his walker from one therapy to the next,  and soon he will be starting the walk to lunch program.  The nurses or therapy assistants will be supervising his walking to the lunch room.  He is also on a list to start the breakfast club.  He will go to a therapy kitchen in the morning and they will help him make his own breakfast 5 days a week!  There is a school room at the center,  and James goes there 3 hours a week. He is working on his math skills and idea generation.  They are also working closely with speech to encourage his speaking and intelligibility while they work on his school goals.  I am very impressed with the programs here so far!  The therapists are very thorough and I love how it is truly a team approach.  It is a very relaxed, atmosphere on the unit and the staff all seem happy and they all seem very passionate about what they do.  James spends the weekends with Sarah and I at our trailer.  It has been a very interesting experience camping here though!  We arrived at the beginning of the Ponoka Stampede,  and the town was packed,  not to mention nightly concerts, fireworks and parties going on all around us for the first week we were here.  I am so glad that is over!  Now we fall asleep listening to the coyotes in the evenings.  The July storms have started and we have experienced a few Alberta thunder, lightening , wind and hail storms!  Needless to say,  we are actively looking for a sturdier place to live in than our tent trailer!

May 27 th 2014

Just a very quick post.  James' funding for the Halvar Jonson Center in Ponoka, Alberta has been approved!  He is officially on the waiting list and is likely to get a bed sometime in June!  It all just became very real!  Time to go get organized!

May 2014

Nope, I haven't given up on blogging!  I know it has been a long time since I posted last.  Life has just been very hectic.  

The latest thing we have been working on has been looking into the Halvar Jonson Center for brain injury rehabilitation in Ponoka, Alberta.  James had an appointment with his rehab doctor in Vancouver April 14 th.  We asked her about a referral to the Halvar Jonson Center.  She thought it would be a positive thing for him,  so we started the process.  James and I flew out to  Edmonton and stayed with my bestie out there.  She was an incredible chauffeur and hostess to us while we were there.  She drove us to Lacombe on Sunday and we went to church where the Ponoka members go to church.  We met some really cool people and everyone was very nice!  We even met the doctor from the center at church!  That was kind of funny.  When I explained to someone that we were out to check out the center,  they told me that there was a doctor who worked there in the ward. When they introduced us we quickly realized that we were going to meet at the center the next day!   We went to Ponoka on Sunday afternoon and explored the town,  then we stayed at a hotel in ponoka,  and explored some more on Monday morning and went to the center in the afternoon.  They did an informal assessment and we had a tour.  I think even James was impressed!  We are now waiting to see if the BC Ministry of health will fund him to go the Center.  It is a longer stay than the rehab programs available in BC.  He would stay for anywhere from 4 months to a year.  We are planning to move out to Ponoka for the time that he is there.  We are not sure exactly what that will look like right now, as to where we would live,  but we are exploring some options.  I think James' best shot at the most success is if the family is nearby and he can be with us on weekends.  

While we are waiting to hear from the ministry of health,  James is continuing to have physiotherapy 3 times a week,  go to the pool once a week and the gym twice a week.  He has a worker (She is awesome!)who takes his to most of these appointments and also helps him with his physio excercises and speech excercises five days a week!  He is keeping busy and continuing to work on his rehabilition the best he can at home.

Home again!

James came home again on February 1 st!  He had his first physio session since he came home, yesterday.  It is nice to be back with the home team!  His physiotherapist said that he can see that James is not as good at using the walker as he was when he left ( his team at GF Stronge did not use the walker with him really at all until the last couple of weeks. ). But he did really well standing without holding or touching anything, (2-3 minutes) and he did great with stretching his shoulder to get his right hand up over his head.  James has been doing quite a bit of walking with me just on his arm, and being without the wheelchair for periods of time in the house.  Monday was a provincial holiday,  and it snowed on Sunday night!  When James got up in the morning he wanted to go outside in the snow.  I pushed him in his chair halfway out the driveway and he decided he wanted to go back inside!  When we got inside we saw that his wheels were packed with snow,  so it was a good excuses for a chair free day!  He was out of his chair for about 12 hours!  James is going to his day program 5 days a week again.  His aide takes him to his physio appointments,  swim therapy,  adapted karate, working in the gym, doing his daily speech and physio excercises, as well as anything else they plan!  He is also going to a special needs young adults group at the community center once a week!  He is at his happiest when he is busy.  James was feeling very lonely and bored at the hospital,  and his mood has improved drastically since he came home!  Next week he will start seeing a speech therapist in Campbell river at the hospital outpatient center.  She will see him twice a month to just follow up on his speech  and change his home speech program as needed.  

We are working on renovations to part of the house so that James can have an area to himself.  It will have a bedroom,  a mini kitchen area, and a sitting area.  We picked up flooring a while ago and the bedroom area is now floored and painted,  we are now working on the main area.  It is turning into a bit of a bigger job that we originally thought.  The walls are in rough shape and we just decided to replace some of the gyprock.  I am hoping to have the space livable for him in a couple of months.  We are just plugging away at it on the weekends.  

2014!

Well James has a room to himself again.  His last roommate didn't work out very well.  The roommate was still quite confused,  and got up during the night, made a mess of the room and sat on the edge of James bed.  James was just a bit freaked out!  I suggested that James be the one to move rooms,  as I knew James would be able to adjust to being in a new room better than the roommate.  

James is using a walker from gf Stronge now.  He said that he didn't like his walker because he sometimes bumps his knees.  The gf Stronge walker has a flip up seat so there is more room for his knees when he walks.  He is being much more cooperative about walking with the walker now! 

James also started pool therapy this week!  Yay!  It's about time!  He goes twice a week at the GF Stronge pool and once a week at the therapy pool near gf Stronge.  

There is a conference meeting next Monday.  And there is a discharge date being talked about!  The date they gave me is January 29 th.  Since that is a Wednesday,  I am trying to get it shifted to Saturday, February 1 st.  James has done quite well with his speech.  I do feel like he is a bit easier to understand.  I think it will just take time for his speech to become clear enough for him to be understood by someone who isn't around him all the time.  I was hoping he would get more independent with his walking,  but I think that is going to take more time. He is getting better at walking with the rail and a cane,  but he still needs a spotter when her uses his walker or walks with the rail and a cane.  It is just so hard to be patient,  but I think it will just take time...

We have found a great place to practice walking on the weekends.  There is a hallway In the basement at gf Stronge that has a ramp and railings.  I help James practice rail walking with his cane,  we practice some walker walking on the flat part of the hallway and then he plays around coming down the long ramp with his wheelchair!  James and Sarah both had a blast going down the ramp with the wheelchair last weekend!  

I have finally found the courage to use the buses and trains to get to and from the ferry in Vancouver now!  We have done a little bit of exploring Vancouver on the transit on the weekends now.  A couple of weeks ago we went to Longsdale Quay ( James bought another fedora hat ) and last weekend we went to the anthropology museum at UBC.