Rehab... not THAT kind of rehab!

So yesterday, we returned to DC and had to leave the family at home. It was hard to leave knowing that there's still so much left to do, but we'll be getting daily updates from mom so don't worry, you'll read it all here, I promise.

When we left yesterday, dad had just come back from his x-ray on his hip. He keeps on having sharp pains in his left hip that are just agonizing. He said it feels like knives just stabbing at his insides when he gets it agitated. And to make it worse, after he's in the pain "zone" he stays uncomfortable for about two hours. The worst is when he has to move from the hospital bed to the stretcher and back. The nurses, while they are wonderful, and they don't mean to, but they end up contorting his hip in the wrong way and he is in immense pain. It almost makes me pass out to see him like this. Trust me, it's not good.

Since they haven't really given us a reason for this pain, they did an x-ray to see if anything had been broken in the fall. Mom says it came back showing nothing unusual so they've decided it must just be the broken vertebraes in his back getting moved around, causing pain.

Before we left yesterday, they put the trapeze bars around his bed giving him a dangling bar overhead to hold on to and thus allowing him to pull his upper body up and move around. This helps him to adjust his back and get more comfortable in the bed.

The latest word is that he'll be in rehab for 2-3 weeks. I want to clarify here that this is not rehab on his legs. This is rehab on his upper body in order to teach him how to be more independent. They want to know that he can take care of himself for the most part so they've started showing him how to use his arm strength to get around. They move him from the hospital bed into a wheelchair, then he has to wheel himself down the hall to the gym. Then they give his arms a good work out and send him back to rest. It wears him out, but it's good for him. As mom said, it will get him functional and independently active for when he does come home.

When he does go home, he'll have the hospital bed, trapeze bars and wheelchair. He'll also be sporting the external fixators (the rods and pins in his legs) so his legs will be straight in front of him. The back brace will also be a must. They hope that his back injuries will heal in 6-8 weeks on their own, but only time will tell. He'll have to go back to Chapel Hill in 4-6 weeks to do the knee reconstruction surgery on both legs. This surgery won't happen til the vein graft wound has healed completely so in reality, we don't know when that will be. We assume that he will then return home in a cast or a brace of some sort, we really don't know.

The vascular surgeon visited yesterday and stood at the edge of dad's bed and proclaimed that he was "very pleased" at the way his leg was healing. When they did the vein graft, his leg was so swolen, they were not able to stitch him back up. So they left the wound open and as the swelling goes down, they will pull the soutures together letting his wound close and heal. Yesterday they were able to pull two soutures together and dad felt the pain which is a GOOD sign! Any feeling in that part of his leg is good because that means there is a chance he'll regain feeling in his right foot. The doctors think that the fluid in his right leg/foot is pressing on a nerve imparing his sensations and preventing him from feeling anything. We hope once the swelling goes down (and it's still pretty swolen) it will move from this nerve and his sense of touch in his foot will come back.

Today he visited the gym again for physical therapy for an hour, came back to the room for lunch and then went back for more. Then he had occupational therapy for an hour. He looks forward to this time becuase when he's doing therapy, he's not lying in the bed helpless, this gets him moving his upper body. He will do 3 hours of intense therapy a day until he goes home.

It is amazing to look at the pictures from last week and the ones now. He has come so far in just 11 days, it is nothing short of a miracle what the doctors can do these days. We all know that it is God at work and we are sending up prayers constantly. Thank you for helping us do that and for the many acts of kindness you have shown to our family. We are so blessed!