Tuesday, July 22

Yesterday was a busy therapy day for Tommy. In OT, Robin had him removing large clothespins from a line and dropping them into a trough below; he did fine with his left hand, but his right hand was unable to let go of the pins to let them drop. Brie, the speech therapist, had lunch with him as a way to address the "big bites" problem, and she had him using his more controllable left hand to hold the fork. She explained to him that, until he gets the bite-portion problem under control, he can't move up from pureed to soft food, because even though his swallowing has improved the huge bites of hard food could cause him to choke. Hoping for progress on that front. His last therapy of the day was physical therapy, and here he showed significant improvement when a young fellow named Shannon worked with him for the first time. During the session, Tommy did 20 leg lifts--modest but consistent--with his left leg, with a weight attached to his ankle. And, at the end of the session, Shannon got Tommy to propel his own wheelchair to the gym door, using only his left arm and left leg. This was a definite first.
Before leaving, I asked Tommy the name of the horse (see previous post), and without a pause, he said, "Trigger." He'd obviously been thinking about it.