Bunn’s Prairie

Kaley was admitted to the U of M for the first time since her brain injury today.  She got sick several times throughout the night and we found blood in her emesis.  She is stable and in relatively good condition.  We had to give her a little bit of lorazapam to get her to stop throwing up and that 1 mg sure did the trick.  We’re going to back off to a lower dose if we need to use it again.

Funny, this time around instead of being angry and the crappy care that we pretty consistently received at the U, I had a beaten down feeling today.  I still had a bitter and tart tone in my voice when it came to specific malpractices at the U, but for the most part I felt (and sounded I am sure) helpless and defeated that we had returned.  The strange thing is, I seem to have gotten a more receptive audience today.  This could just be the staff we happened to encounter today or perhaps they sincerely felt sorry for us.  I’m not sure.

We find ourselves one year out from Kaley’s catastrophic anoxic brain injury (August 25th).  What an amazing roller coaster it has been.  She has gone from being entirely non-responsive to being able to help a fellow singer of the “Armor Hot Dog” song.  (who but Kaley knows that?!?)

An update as to what has been going on in the past month.  I took Kaley to see a neuro-opthomologist because Kaley was having trouble seeing out of her good eye.  He said he couldn’t get a good look as to what was going on in her good eye because there was this big cataract blocking his view.  Whew.  That’s not to say there’s nothing else going on, but removing the cataract should have a significant effect on her vision.

Kaley is experiencing shoulder lock from lack of use during the past year.  Last week she received botox in both shoulders which will allow OT to work on improving her range of motion and flexibility in her shoulders.

Otherwise, things are going relatively well.  We are taking Kaley out of the nursing home for out-of-doors (in Kaley speak) trips every weekend.  Last weekend she visited my family (8 of us total) and I think that was about the size limit of what Kaley could handle.  She joined us in eating some basic foods (just string cheese and fruit cocktail and Diet Coke).  She did very well with all of that.  In fact she was able to use a straw with the Diet Coke and manage how much she wanted to take in before swallowing it down cleanly.

I am probably going to have Kaley evaluated for admission to the Knapp Rehab Center at HCMC sometime during the next month.  It appears that Golden Living Center - Hopkins is approaching their limit of what they can do for Kaley.  I want to wait until after the cataract surgery is past us before making a move.  I also need to investigate what our post-Knapp options are.  That is, if she’s not ready to go home will Hopkins take her back?  How long does the program run for?  What does an average of 13 days really mean? Is that an mean, mode, or median?  What is the standard deviation?

Hope this finds everyone well.  I am thinking sometime in the next couple of weeks I may take dictation and see what Kaley would like to post here for everyone.