Paul update - Day 61

Day 61 - Monday 12 January

We collected Paul on Thursday (once his 24 hour heart monitor had been taken off; no results yet though) for his weekend at home, but were advised that he had been given an appointment at the ARI to see the neurophysiologist on Friday morning - for some time since the accident Paul has complained of a general numbness in his little finger. Curiously though, it wasn’t on his right hand which is generally weaker, but on his left and all we could think was that perhaps it was related to the fact that he had broken his finger a couple of years ago, but nonetheless we thought it should be checked out.

We therefore made our way to the ARI first thing Friday morning (after breakfast at the Bistro at Paul’s request!) and found that since the abolition of car parking charges on 1^st January, parking was even harder than it used to be. Not only that, but you can no longer drive up the road past the main ARI entrance, you have to make a big detour which effectively takes you all round the (full) car park and so I dropped Pat and Paul off to try and park somewhere. Nonetheless, we managed to report to Doctor Frankenstein at the allotted time and he then proceeded to stick pins and electrodes into Paul’s arm. I am sure that if Igor had been on duty that day and there had been a thunderstorm there would have been a kite flying overhead....!

In actual fact, the guy was brilliant and incredibly informative, telling us everything he was doing and why, and it was fascinating. Basically, first of all he stuck pins in Paul’s arm at various key points to measure the sensation, and having ascertained that there was some nerve damage he then passed electric current through various parts of the nerve (which made Paul’s arm and fingers move involuntarily) to determine the location and extent of the damage. Fortunately, the nerve (the Ulna nerve – the one that makes your fingers tingle when you bang your funny bone) has some damage but it is not severed and Paul has some sensation, which is very good news. He wasn’t able to determine exactly where the damage was, but suspected it was in Paul’s elbow. He explained that nerves re-generate at about 1mm per day so the worst case is that it could take 440 days from whenever the damage occurred to fully recover, but he suspected it would be much less than that.

It really was fascinating to watch what he could do and see the wave patterns that were generated on the computer in response to Paul’s hand movements, and from this (there were flat spots in the wave pattern) he could tell exactly what the problem was. I did ask him if his surname was Frankenstein, but he assured us it wasn’t! It certainly seems as though this numbness shouldn’t be a long term problem which is good news, and we wondered whether it happened in the accident itself or whether he did the damage when he was thrashing about when unconscious – whenever it was, it was almost certainly caused by a blow to the elbow.

We eventually decided that we would speak to the Evening Express – time will tell if it was a wise decision - and so they sent a photographer round on Friday afternoon to take some pictures of Paul. They also wanted some of him as a toddler, at school and also before the accident as well as some of the car. I emphasised that we thought ourselves extremely fortunate that Paul had survived and was making such a good recovery, that we had all had fantastic support from our friends, that the doctors, nurses and therapists at both the ARI and Maidencraig had been absolutely superb and that all young drivers should take it as a lesson that they are not invincible – whether this is the line they take in the story will be interesting to see. It was supposed to be in today’s Evening Express, but today’s headline was that 2 more young drivers had been killed in separate accidents which presumably meant that Paul’s story was not appropriate and they will keep it for another day.

That’s three young people killed in the North East this year already, and it is only the 12^th January......

Anyway, after his photo shoot Paul went to Holly’s to say goodbye to some of his friends who were going back to Uni. We also went for a drink with Alison and Tony and had a great time chatting. Saturday was relatively quiet, we just nipped into the village during the day and took Paul to the Bistro for dinner, and when we got home we lit the fire and watched the latest Indiana Jones film.

We all managed to get a bit of a lie in on Sunday, and in the afternoon Paul went to the cinema with Eilidh - he thoroughly enjoyed getting out without the old farts in tow! They got back about 1730, we had dinner and then it was time to bring him back to Maidencraig again!

He is continuing to have physio, occupational and speech therapy but all the indications are that he will now be allowed home every weekend and will become more and more independent, and the hope is still that he will be discharged at the end of January. Paul is starting to talk about the future and what he wants to do, which is very encouraging.

As I think I mentioned before, there is a case conference scheduled for 19^th January when we should find out exactly where we are.

He is now starting to argue with us as well, so he is definitely on the mend!