life in a rehab hospital

Waukesha Rehab Hospital came highly recommended for my situation. It is a brand-new facility, but being in Waukesha, it was anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour to get there, depending on traffic. As mentioned earlier, I got there late at night on Saturday, but they did give me some food and then I hit the hay. On Sunday, one of the therapist checked me out and determined that my muscles and nerves on the left side were functioning and that we should get things back to normal. It is just a matter of time and letting the nerves find a new path to the muscles through a lot of physical therapy and occupational therapy, plus a lot of hard work at home. the whole purpose for the rehab hospital is to get you out as soon as possible and get home so you can function properly at home, which is just the beginning of the journey. Like any hospital, you are a prisoner there,not being able to leave the building and dependent on the nurses and aides. During the week they would schedule two physiotherapy's and two occupational therapies plus one speech therapy session per day. They were all approximately 45 minutes long. So the weeks went by really fast. Unfortunately, on weekends they only had one therapy session for the whole weekend, which made for long weekends. The therapies is what I really look forward to because I was actually doing something. Otherwise, you're just lying in bed and watching TV, which for me is quite boring. Most of the people working there were really nice and of course we have our favorites but the communication and response time when you paged for the nurses was extremely poor. Since I was supposed to be helped for transferring, I always had to ring for the nurse and sometimes it would be over an hour before someone showed up. When dealing with bathroom issues, that is an eternity. I am also an early riser, but they wouldn't come in for several hours later to get me out of bed. An example of poor communication, I told them about the swelling in my left ankle on Monday morning and then the following Friday, they send me to a hospital for an ultrasound to see what was the cause. And that was Friday night about 10 PM. Besides those minor inconveniences, it wasn't that bad. The food was really good and since I had an unrestricted diet, I could eat pretty much what I wanted, they just wanted to make sure that I got lots of protein. Every morning I have my bacon, cheese, and ham omelette,along with my oatmeal, a variety of fruit and every once in a while some pastry. The lunches and dinners were always good, but if you didn't like anything on the menu they could grill you up something. All of the therapist were really nice and like a mentioned above, the therapies is what I really looked forward to. It is amazing how the simple things in life, like walking, become a challenge. The physical and mental part of trying to learn how to walk again can be very tiring. Thank goodness, I was in such good shape to begin with, which did help a lot as far as learning how to walk. You have to think about every little detail, where to position your hips, making sure you lock your knees before taking a step among other things. If you forget to do one of them, then chances are you'll be lying on the floor. There's a lot of exercise involved to strengthen the right side because the right side has to compensate for the left side. The physiotherapist basically works on the waist down while the occupational therapist works from the waist up, plus teach you how to get dressed, shower, and typical daily things. it was great to have family visitors but at the same time it was still very emotional for me. With my daughter's wedding coming up and missing my grandson starting to walk, I felt like I was missing out on quite a few things which again would cause me to cry. When I got to the rehab center, I had three weeks before my daughter's wedding and after one week there my goal was to make sure that I could walk my daughter down the aisle for her wedding, even though the people at the rehab clinic said I would probably have to do it in the wheelchair. Two days before my release, we had two therapists come to our home to determine what I have to do to get our house ready. My release date was the day before the wedding so it made for quite the weekend. The wedding and the timing of my release made for quite a hectic weekend. They didn't deliver my bed which is in the living room until 4PM that Friday, along with the wheelchair. Then I had to be at the rehearsal dinner by 6 PM, which was over a half hour away. So between getting home and getting ready for the wedding there was very little time, which added a little stress to the weekend. But we survived.

pogo