Mondays are the worst for everyone because it means back to work and Brian had that today for sure! He had a good day overall, but it wasn't the calm weekend days we just had. He had a PACKED schedule today. He was at Swedish bright and early tomorrow for a follow up ultrasound for his leg blood clot. That went great and the clot is gone! Woohoo!!
Then he has his day full of therapies. He started the day with PT. Over the weekend Brian was complaining about pain in his shoulders and no meds were really helping with his pain. We tried several different types of meds with no success. I also brought in some Tiger Balm (shout out to Cassie for introducing me to Tiger Balm when we were in London) and that seemed to help but barely. The nurses and I mentioned that we would definitely bring it up with his PT and OT today. The OT team knew about his shoulder pain from her notes from over the weekend so they were prepped to work on that a bit. We also mentioned it to PT and she wanted to try some dry needling to see if that would help to relieve the muscle tightness. She said the dry needling works as kind of a reset to the muscles and can help to release the stored tension. He did this in 2 different muscles on his right side, but it seemed to be a bit painful during the process since he is so tight. Hopefully this will help his right shoulder feel a little better tomorrow! He also worked with PT on a balance game.
We saw his psychologist today too and she was pleased with how the weekend went with the low stimulation and relaxation. It was a short and sweet visit from her today. I did ask about visitors and she suggested for this upcoming weekend to probably still keep it to minimum visitors since the low stimulation was really good for Brian. I know this seems a bit of a step back since we did have quite a few visitors at the LTAC but that was way way way less stimulation during the week. Brian really needs the weekend to recover and reset a bit after the stressful (this doesn't seem like the right word, but it's all I can think of right now) weeks at Craig.
After lunch we had OT and they really focused on Brian's shoulders. Since the clot was cleared, they could use heat packs on his shoulders to help warm up his muscles. Then she really stretched him out with the best stretches for a rotator cuff tear. She did the same stretches on both sides since he has similar pain in both shoulders. She also then put some ice on his shoulders after the stretching to see if that would help with the pain as well. So hopefully after all this, Brian's shoulders feel a bit better tomorrow.
After OT Brian had speech to round out his whole day. Nothing really to report there since she is still doing her sessions privately right now, but the session went well and they are working well together.
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