Wednesday April 2

 Today was such an exciting day! Brian left the hospital campus during PT today (more on that later)! 

Brian started out his day today with ADLs with OT. He spends these sessions working on how to independently get himself ready for the day. He has some strategies that his OT has worked with him on to help him and he is doing really well with those! Unfortunately those are going to have to be modified again next week after his rotator cuff surgery, but they will work on those when the time comes. 

After his ADLs he had his speech session. She is working on some wrap up work to make the hand off to the new therapist easier for both the new therapist and Brian. After speech, Brian had his OT session. They are planning for Brian to make his Lake Mack breakfast sandwiches on Monday before surgery so today they worked together for Brian to create a shopping list and recipe to follow. Brian had to type up most of the information on his own.

Then Brian had a long break for lunch and a nap. He didn't get much napping done though because there were a handful of doctors that came in at various times to talk with Brian and to ask questions related to surgery next week. There is a lot of prep that goes into surgery and they are making sure Brian's all good to go. 

Then he had PT! And today Brian did a "scavenger hunt" and a majority of the hunt was done off the hospital campus! We walked down the street toward Swedish (down that horrible hill that almost broke me the other day) all the way to the main entrance and then Brian navigated us back to Craig. At the end of the trip when we got back to the gym, Brian said he wouldn't be able to do that again without his PTs help and I said not to worry because I don't know if I could do that either. Then he did a few lunges to end his session with PT. 

Then after PT we had another speech session with his speech therapist who helps Brian with his iPad. She was saying the iPad is going to be helpful for Brian going home because right now she estimated that Brian's speaking is about 30% accurate and his verbal understanding is also about 30% accurate. If you interact with him, you probably think that is way higher, but Brian is really good at faking it and he is also reading all the non-verbal things more than actually understanding the words right now. He can pick up on facial expressions, body language, and gestures really well. And we do these things so much when we communicate, that he does seem to really understand when we are talking to him even if his verbal understanding is still very poor. The iPad will help in these situations, but also even just writing down some of the words and key phrases will help Brian a lot too because his simple sentence reading comprehension is great. 

🤍