Paul update - Day 36

Day 36 – Thursday 18 December

Paul’s physio session today was scheduled for 14:30 and as we had arrived at Woodend fairly early (you can only spend so long at Tesco’s....) the physio took the opportunity to run through a few things with us and Paul.  He practised walking up and down the physio room and she showed us where to stand and how to support him, or rather where to stand to catch him if necessary as he doesn’t really need support. 

His walking has improved immensely, even over the last couple of days, especially considering that as far as we know he hasn’t had that much practise, and whilst his walking still doesn’t look totally natural it is not far off so with a few more days practise I reckon he will be walking unaided. 

They also have some steps in the main physio room so the physio asked Paul if he was up to having a try. He said he was and I think the physio expected him to make his way over to the steps and wait for her to explain what to do, instead of which he just walked straight up and straight down!  She then explained that he should do it one step at a time, how to balance, lead with the good leg going up and with the weaker one coming down, but he just really wanted to get on with it.  So he coped with the steps extremely well apart from one moment when his knee gave way, but even then he managed to regain his balance even though we were there to catch him, but it gave us a bit of a heart stopping moment!

The other thing we covered was a few exercises that he needs to do in bed to strengthen his trunk so all we need to cover tomorrow is getting in and out of the car and in and out of the bath so, almost certainly, he will be home this weekend – we envisage bringing him home Saturday and returning him Sunday – but this will be finally confirmed tomorrow.  If he does come home, just to confirm you are welcome to come and see him Saturday afternoon but I will confirm the times in tomorrow’s blog.

Stuart and Carolyn visited this afternoon and we spent quite a while with them in the WRVS and Paul was on good form, joining in with the conversations and laughing and joking.

Kevin (the lad opposite) has gone home for the weekend so Paul was on his own in the ward but we played a few games of UNO after supper and watched Top Gear, and after all the physio Paul was quite tired.

So, things are really looking up, Paul is making remarkable progress; one of the nurses admitted to us today that the brief they had been given about Paul before he arrived was that he had received an extremely seriously head injury and was in a bad way, so the nurses and physios really can’t believe how well he is doing.  If progress continues at this rate, we anticipate that in the New Year he should be coming home fairly regularly. Which will be an enormous relief......