Friday, March 30, 2007

Transfer to MRC...

Ben began his first stay at MRC in the end of May, 2002. He was first admitted to the ventilator floor, but only stayed there a couple of days. Since he was doing some breathing on his own during the day, he was transferred to the TBI floor. Here he could begin much needed therapy.

We drove down to see Ben the following day. He was in his room sleeping. The ventilator was hooked up and his G-tube was hooked to his tube feeding pump. His nurse told us that Ben had received some range of motion therapy earlier and that Ben had been suctioned several times to remove secretions from his lungs. We all just pulled up chairs around his bed and sat with him.

Since Ben was now over 240 miles away from us, we discussed how best to stay near him. We began coming down as much as possible and stayed at a motel. Michelle, Ben's fiance', decided to move to Mt. Vernon so she could be with him daily. She found a small house to rent that was only a couple of miles from the hospital. We bought her a sofa sleeper that we could use when we came down to visit.

In June 2002 Ben started looking toward a sound made before him. He still wasn't tracking objects, but this was an improvement. A wheelchair was brought in for him and he started sitting in it for short amounts of time. He could tolerate being off of the ventilator for longer amounts of time during the day. So, when the weather was nice we would wheel him out for short walks around the hospital grounds. We occasionally had to take his tube feeding pump with us. It was on a large IV pole with wheels. It kind of limited where we could go but it was nice to get Ben out for awhile. Near the end of June we went with Ben to his speech therapy session.

Ben was not able to speak at this time and we didn't know what he was aware of around him. The sessions would consist of the therapist seeing how Ben would respond to verbal cues. She would point to one of her fingers and try to get Ben to respond by doing the same thing. He would sometimes respond with a gesture and sometimes not. There was no way of really knowing if Ben really understood what she was saying or just mimicking what she was doing. On this day she tried something a little different. She had a large flash card and on it was written, "raise your eyebrows". She showed this to Ben to see if he would respond. Nothing happened. She tried to direct his attention to the card, but Ben would only tap on his tray. She told him to look at the card and try to read it. Finally Ben concentrated on the card. Slowly, he twitched his eyebrows up! Our hearts leaped for joy. That was the first time we knew that his reading ability was still there, and we knew that with hard work, Ben could improve.

more to come...

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Reaching for Help

Reaching for Help
This is a picture of Ben before his accident that I added to the Christ image.

Ben and Sammy

Ben and Sammy
Ben and his new friend, Sammy. 11/2003