Monday 31Mar

 Today was a busy day today for Brian. He had an initial consultation with his orthopedic surgeon that would potentially do his surgery for his rotator cuff. We saw him for both shoulder since there are difficulties with both. The consultation went great and the doctor and the PA were phenomenal. He said he works with patients at Craig a lot because they are connected. This is really great since brain injury patients are a whole different ball game of patient. He did also say that typically he doesn't like to perform surgery on Craig patients during their inpatient stay, but Brian is the time he would make an exception. Brian has a "massive tear" (doc's words) in his rotator cuff. We have seen this since he essentially has 0 function in the shoulder right now. Great news is the surgeon is optimistic for the surgery and is going to try and get him in soon. I don't know any details on that, but that is so exciting that we will get this surgery done soon! For the left side he will do a cortisone injection and manually manipulate the left side while Brian is under for the surgery on the other shoulder. 

Then because of the consult at Swedish, Brian missed most of his speech session which was a huge bummer of course. But we did make it to the end of that appointment so he got a little bit of speech time. After speech he saw his psychologist and she talked to Brian a little bit more about his specific injury. She had mentioned it was like a tattoo on his brain. He just had to one up me with all my tattoos. 😂 just kidding, but that is pretty cool now that he can tell people that he has a tattoo in and on his brain. She was also so happy to see Brian so happy and animated because like I said in the weekend update, he was pretty flat before due to the meds and his personality is really shining through now. 

I also forgot to mention that he started the day today with OT and some ADLs. He showered and got ready for the day with her. She switched his shower today to a bench that would be similar (if not the same) to the bench we would need to use at home post discharge. This is great for him to be working on practicing how to shower safely with the equipment we will have after we no longer have the help from Craig. 

Then this afternoon he has PT were he worked on his walking again on the treadmill. He did forwards (so fast today!), backwards, and sidesteps. The improvement overall is huge, but I really noticed it on his sidestepping. He really really struggled the first time she tried that and today he looked like it was no problem at all. 

He ended the day today with a session with his adaptive technology speech therapist who helps him use his iPad to communicate. The use of the iPad (or similar device) is something that will likely continue post discharge to help Brian communicate more effectively when the words aren't coming out right. It likely won't be long term but will help until his speech improves to where he no longer needs the assistance. 

I want to end today's update with a funny story. Well embarrassing for me, but I think also kinda funny. When we went to Swedish today we had someone who walked us over at the start of our appointment but they did not help us walk back. We were, of course, not paying attention to the way to go but it didn't seem hard... well. It turns out, it was hard. We got off on the wrong floor because we entered from outside so I assumed we were going to the first floor. Wrong. So we ended up having to walk out the valet entrance and then up a HUGE hill where they were doing work on the sidewalk so it was loose asphalt. I think it would have been very tough solo, but I was also pushing/pulling Brian in his wheelchair. When we finally made it to the elevator at Craig I think my heart rate was about 2000 and I could taste blood. So... I am out of shape clearly. Time for me to also hit the gym 😅

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