The Trip Home

Saturday  February 25, 2012

The Trip Home…

On Saturday, February 18, I went home for the first time in 6 months.  We went by a Red Cross van out of Woodstock. Picked us up in my manual wheelchair at Parkwoodand dropped us off in Tillsonburg at about 11 in the morning…..wow…. was it great to be home.  My brother-in-law did a fantastic job on the pad for the wheelchair lift in the garage.  The dog even remembered me.  She went crazy when I went into the house and she stayed near me all day long.  Touring around the house with my wife was amazing,checking out the new washroom facility and in general checking out the house.  The  house for the most part is wheelchair accessible.  I had lunch, homemade vegetarian lasagna, just a ‘little’ better than hospital food.  Red Cross picked us up at 4 and brought us back to Parkwood just in time for dinner.

On consultation with the Psychologist and the Dr., it was decided that I was not physically or mentally ready to have my knee done on March 1 andthe surgery has been postponed.  I will see the surgeon on Tuesday and find out what will happen in the future. The tear in the left calf is not healing very quickly and it is swollen and is larger than the right calf. The left foot also swells up and is very puffy and purple after a day in the chair. Elevating it overnight helps and it is almost back to normal by morning.

Someone suggested that I tell you how I feel. I am not very good at expressing my feelings but here goes. Hmmmm….how do I feel? It is easier for me to write about feelings than talk about them. I’ve gone through all sorts of feelings, emotions and moods in the past couple of months from depression, which I’m being treated for, to paranoia where I thought the nurses and everyone was trying to ‘get’ me. Now I see how foolish that was but it was so real at the time. I’ve been very moody, sad, happy,  mellow and jangled. Usually around 5 PM, I start to get ‘hyperactive’ for an hour or so. For those of you who have seen me on 4 cups of coffee it was something like that only in a wheelchair. During the time here I always felt that my body would fix itself as it has in the past. Depression set in when I realized it wasn’t or couldn’t repair everything and it frightened me a lot.

I now know what it means to feel mentally tired. When there are lots of visitors, I can’t really explain it….it just becomes overwhelming.  I am feeling a lot better now and it was a relief to have the surgery canceled and I can now get on with the rehab. Don’t know if I’ve explained my feelings or not…. ‘I do not feel sad’ is the best way to say how I feel right now. The meds  must be working.

PT is going well but now it’s not my knee that is holding me back but my calf. Friday I was up on the right leg with a lot of support from 3 physios and probably had about 25 percent of my body weight on my leg. Again I can’t multi task that is, think about standing and ‘worry’ about the left calf.The sliding from the chair to beds or mats is getting better all the time and I really don’t need supervision any more. Although there are instances were some help is needed. Before the calf was hurt I could get up and sit on the side of the bed by myself and get into the car. I’ll have to wait until the calf heals and try again. The best case scenario would be to have a discharge date after the calf is healed and I’m able to put some weight on the left leg but that will be up to the team.

OT is going well as the weight is going up on most of the lifts and the left arm is loosening  up a lot. I get fitted into my new wheelchairs on Monday.A power chair for getting around the house and out and about,a manual one for when I’m out in the car.

 There is a wheelchair lab here with all types of surfaces to practice on.  I need a lot of practice as I steer using my hand and not my fingers. I steer with the stick between my thumb and index finger.The fingerson the right hand don’t have a lot of feeling and I have to see them to do things. The therapist says I don’t know where my fingers are in space and time. My brain hasn’t figured that out yet. The therapist also said the brain is plastic and can grow new cells and make new connections so with lots of practice, my brain can rewire some of the connections and it  is ongoing.

My daughter in Australia sent me a definition of courage. COURAGE is not the absence of fear or despair but the strength to conquer them. It appears that I forgot this at the height of my depression. Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to see through it.

Thanks for listening………