Blog at http://drpeg2003.blogspot.com/
May 18, 2006 (4:41pm)
Oops, I forgot an important thing. Our address! Want to encourage those cards and letters to Gary. Send them to:
Gary Gruenhage
Shepherd Center
2020 Peachtree Rd. NW (Don’t forget to put the “Road” – there’s a million Peachtree something-or-others in Atlanta)
Atlanta, Ga. 30309
Address anything to me identically to the above, since there are no mailboxes at the apartments.
Anything that didn’t make it to us by the time we left Birmingham will be forwarded to our home address, and from there to here, so it should make it eventually.
Warning: Moaning and Groaning Ahead.
Neither Gary nor I had a real great day Wednesday. Gary had been significantly more congested and doing a lot more coughing starting the day before we left UAB, so much so that he wasn’t getting much rest and commented that he wished everyone would just leave him alone. I commented on the coughing to the nurses but they kept saying it was good he was coughing the stuff out. But then the night nurse indicated that in fact Gary was not coughing it up and that he needed to be doing his breathing exercises with the “incentispirometer” (incentive +spirometer, apparently) to help clear the congestion. “With the what?” we asked. The nurse seemed surprised Gary hadn’t been given the device. He got one for Gary and showed him how to use it. To me the nurse’s tone was chastising, saying Gary should be doing this or he risked getting pneumonia. After the nurse left, I groused to Gary, “Yeah, well, you would have been doing it had you known about it.” I couldn’t help asking when the nurse returned why we hadn’t been told of this earlier. The answer was basically because the other nurses hadn’t paid close attention to what was going on with the coughing. I don’t know, maybe I’m just too much of a perfectionist. It just makes me mad that here was another thing that Gary had to suffer for because the nurses didn’t recognize the signs in time. Another irritation, excuse the pun, is they hadn’t changed for several days the special pressure socks that Gary has to wear to prevent blood clots, and when they took them off, Gary had a big blister on the top of his foot. But I’m mostly mad about the bed sore. He was never turned until after he already had it. And bed sores are such a stereotypical hospital complication. Ah, well, I suppose I should let it go. Shepherd told us they treat bed sores aggressively, so I don’t think I have to worry about it now. Time will tell if I end up bitching as much about the nurses here ;-) At least they look older – I swear most of the nurses we had at UAB looked about twenty, and I’m wondering if they just didn’t have the experience for the job.
Anyway, Gary was having a lot of trouble breathing during his ambulance ride to Shepherd, he told me later, and he ended up back on oxygen. Meanwhile I was coping with the traffic from B’ham to Atlanta (I do want to thank Lex Oversteegen here . Lex came at my call and helped me pack up my car – that was a fantastic help). Six miles out of B’ham we slowed to a stop then continued at a crawl. Turned out the three-lane highway was gradually being thinned down to one. My timer went off for me to get off the highway and stretch, but no way was I going to exit and then try to get back on. My right calf was cramping, my left leg was tingling from bun to toe, my back was aching. We eventually got to the fifty yards where the actual construction was taking place. The traffic cleared after that point and I saw a road sign for Atlanta. “Great,” I muttered, “only 135 miles to go.” There were more parts of the highway where traffic slowed way down for construction, but nothing as bad as that. I was pooped by the time I hit Atlanta, my mind starting to play little tricks on me, but I gutted it out. Fortunately Shepherd had provided great directions to their place (even to one who “directionally impaired,” as sister-in-law Norma puts it), and I found it easily. I checked on Gary, who I knew had arrived safely because Sheryl had called me while I was driving (thus becoming one of those dopes who talks on their cell phone while driving) to say he had gotten there and to tell me where to pick up my housing packet. Gary looked somewhat tired out, but said he felt very positive about the people he had met, commenting that these people seemed to know what they were doing. He seemed like he wanted my company, so I stayed a couple of hours, then left to check out my new digs. The part I was dreading was carrying just what I would need for the night (including my cooking stuff) up to my second (top) floor apartment (not condo – I don’t know where I got that). My first impression was positive. The housing guy had also called me while I was driving (yikes!) because he wasn’t going to be there by the time I got there. That had its positive aspects, cuz I asked for top floor (I don’t like people walking above me) and in a quiet part of the complex, not facing the street, if such existed. There are twenty-five units on a dead-end street off Peachtree, and he gave me the apartment on the back, far side, opposite the side where the parking lot is. I noted a small living room, a small kitchen, and a small bathroom (as Norma said, at least the kitchen and bathroom are two different rooms). I looked out the windows, which face the rear, and saw trees lined the area right off my balcony. Through them, down a small hill, is another apartment building. And out the kitchen window I could see another apartment building a reasonable distance away. Can’t get much better than that in terms of location for housing in Atlanta. And the apartment is free! But only for thirty days, and since I will definitely be here longer than that, I guess I’m going to end up in a hotel again. Anyway, after checking out the windows, I realized I had seen no bedroom. I wondered in dismay if I was supposed to sleep on the couch. As I looked at the couch, my eye was caught by the big arch-shaped mirror that hung behind it. In the mirror I could see the reflection of a bed. Confused, I looked behind me. Nope, there was a dining table behind me, and the rooms to the side of it were the kitchen and the bathroom. Looking back at the “mirror,” I realized I was looking thru an arch-shaped hole in the wall. I wondered if I was supposed to crawl over the couch through that hole to get to the bed. (Hey, I was tired.) It dawned on me that didn’t make any sense, so I went to the long narrow hall I had entered through, and saw the door to the bedroom. If that door had registered at all when I first entered, I had put it down to leading to a closet. I unloaded from the car what I needed, and by that time I was shaking. I got my dinner started, meditated, then called Janet and Norma to spread the word to both our families that we had arrived safely – seeing that I wasn’t going to be able to send out the word over the internet. Then I ate and got ready for bed.
It felt nice to be in “my own place” rather than a hotel, and it seemed fairly isolated so I was hopeful that it would be quiet. I taped up a sheet over that archway between the bedroom and the living room – I like a bedroom to be like a cave, not open to the rest of the place. I turned on the hotel-like environmental controls in the living room to “fan,” then turned on my own two small fans in the bedroom, all for the white noise value. I took a bath and discovered that unfortunately the one thing this place lacks is really hot water. Then I climbed into bed, stuck a cold pack on my leg, and eventually fell asleep.
Until a damn bird woke me up at 6am. As I lay there listening to Tweetie-Pie, I thought it unfortunate that they didn’t allow cats here. I wondered how they felt about guns. A couple hours later I drifted back to sleep for another forty-five minutes. Then I got up and soon made my way over to Shepherd.
Some more about Shepherd (be prepared for some upcoming non sequiturs). They have about 45 SCI (spinal cord injury) patients here and they group them by age. When Gary is ready for the intensive rehab, he will be in the senior program, which is ages 50 to 65 (Gary asked if that meant he got a senior discount) and consists of a group of eight patients. I found it surprising, and ageist, to learn that they don’t take anyone older than 65 on the theory that such a person would not be returning to a vigorous lifestyle.
The case manager we’ve been assigned, according to Sheryl Hope, is a rehab-specific nurse, so she’ll be familiar with rehab-specific medical issues, unlike a “regular” nurse, so we should have less difficulty with BCBS from this point on, again according to Sheryl.
One thing I noticed here – the nurses are much quicker to answer the call button. While eating his lunch Thursday, Gary started choking, it seemed to me, so in a panic I pressed the call button. The nurse came right away. Fortunately Gary had managed to clear the food on his own by then.
Thursday the occupational therapists did some testing of Gary’s ability to sense touch – a light with a cotton swab, the dull and sharp tests with the two edges of a safety pin. No surprises – Gary’s sensations end at the T4 level, just as the x-rays would indicate. It is called a “complete” injury, because all sensation and movement is lost below it. They also did some spatial testing, to see if he could tell how his limbs were oriented. He couldn’t do this with his legs. Finally was some muscle testing. His right arm was weak (triceps, etc.) but this is felt to be because he was in that big heavy cast for so long, and not due to any nerve damage.
They are wanting to get him in a chair soon and wheel him around the facility and to the gym to do some therapy there, but can’t until the doctor looks over his new x-rays, taken yesterday (Thursday), and decides if Gary needs to wear a brace at first. Gary was disappointed because he had been told he would be in the chair this morning (Friday), but the O.T. came in and said the doctor still hasn’t looked at the x-ray. After that Gary told me he needed to listen to something funny and I went out to the car to find a tape of Car Talk. While we were listening to it the OT came back with some 3,4,5 pound weights and showed Gary some exercises to do. Gary cheered up at this (he told me he had wanted to listen to something funny because he was disappointed about not getting to get up in the chair) – he said it felt good to be getting in some movement again, instead of just laying there all the time.
All for now.
May 18, 2006 (4:41pm)
Oops, I forgot an important thing. Our address! Want to encourage those cards and letters to Gary. Send them to:
Gary Gruenhage
Shepherd Center
2020 Peachtree Rd. NW (Don’t forget to put the “Road” – there’s a million Peachtree something-or-others in Atlanta)
Atlanta, Ga. 30309
Address anything to me identically to the above, since there are no mailboxes at the apartments.
Anything that didn’t make it to us by the time we left Birmingham will be forwarded to our home address, and from there to here, so it should make it eventually.
Warning: Moaning and Groaning Ahead.
Neither Gary nor I had a real great day Wednesday. Gary had been significantly more congested and doing a lot more coughing starting the day before we left UAB, so much so that he wasn’t getting much rest and commented that he wished everyone would just leave him alone. I commented on the coughing to the nurses but they kept saying it was good he was coughing the stuff out. But then the night nurse indicated that in fact Gary was not coughing it up and that he needed to be doing his breathing exercises with the “incentispirometer” (incentive +spirometer, apparently) to help clear the congestion. “With the what?” we asked. The nurse seemed surprised Gary hadn’t been given the device. He got one for Gary and showed him how to use it. To me the nurse’s tone was chastising, saying Gary should be doing this or he risked getting pneumonia. After the nurse left, I groused to Gary, “Yeah, well, you would have been doing it had you known about it.” I couldn’t help asking when the nurse returned why we hadn’t been told of this earlier. The answer was basically because the other nurses hadn’t paid close attention to what was going on with the coughing. I don’t know, maybe I’m just too much of a perfectionist. It just makes me mad that here was another thing that Gary had to suffer for because the nurses didn’t recognize the signs in time. Another irritation, excuse the pun, is they hadn’t changed for several days the special pressure socks that Gary has to wear to prevent blood clots, and when they took them off, Gary had a big blister on the top of his foot. But I’m mostly mad about the bed sore. He was never turned until after he already had it. And bed sores are such a stereotypical hospital complication. Ah, well, I suppose I should let it go. Shepherd told us they treat bed sores aggressively, so I don’t think I have to worry about it now. Time will tell if I end up bitching as much about the nurses here ;-) At least they look older – I swear most of the nurses we had at UAB looked about twenty, and I’m wondering if they just didn’t have the experience for the job.
Anyway, Gary was having a lot of trouble breathing during his ambulance ride to Shepherd, he told me later, and he ended up back on oxygen. Meanwhile I was coping with the traffic from B’ham to Atlanta (I do want to thank Lex Oversteegen here . Lex came at my call and helped me pack up my car – that was a fantastic help). Six miles out of B’ham we slowed to a stop then continued at a crawl. Turned out the three-lane highway was gradually being thinned down to one. My timer went off for me to get off the highway and stretch, but no way was I going to exit and then try to get back on. My right calf was cramping, my left leg was tingling from bun to toe, my back was aching. We eventually got to the fifty yards where the actual construction was taking place. The traffic cleared after that point and I saw a road sign for Atlanta. “Great,” I muttered, “only 135 miles to go.” There were more parts of the highway where traffic slowed way down for construction, but nothing as bad as that. I was pooped by the time I hit Atlanta, my mind starting to play little tricks on me, but I gutted it out. Fortunately Shepherd had provided great directions to their place (even to one who “directionally impaired,” as sister-in-law Norma puts it), and I found it easily. I checked on Gary, who I knew had arrived safely because Sheryl had called me while I was driving (thus becoming one of those dopes who talks on their cell phone while driving) to say he had gotten there and to tell me where to pick up my housing packet. Gary looked somewhat tired out, but said he felt very positive about the people he had met, commenting that these people seemed to know what they were doing. He seemed like he wanted my company, so I stayed a couple of hours, then left to check out my new digs. The part I was dreading was carrying just what I would need for the night (including my cooking stuff) up to my second (top) floor apartment (not condo – I don’t know where I got that). My first impression was positive. The housing guy had also called me while I was driving (yikes!) because he wasn’t going to be there by the time I got there. That had its positive aspects, cuz I asked for top floor (I don’t like people walking above me) and in a quiet part of the complex, not facing the street, if such existed. There are twenty-five units on a dead-end street off Peachtree, and he gave me the apartment on the back, far side, opposite the side where the parking lot is. I noted a small living room, a small kitchen, and a small bathroom (as Norma said, at least the kitchen and bathroom are two different rooms). I looked out the windows, which face the rear, and saw trees lined the area right off my balcony. Through them, down a small hill, is another apartment building. And out the kitchen window I could see another apartment building a reasonable distance away. Can’t get much better than that in terms of location for housing in Atlanta. And the apartment is free! But only for thirty days, and since I will definitely be here longer than that, I guess I’m going to end up in a hotel again. Anyway, after checking out the windows, I realized I had seen no bedroom. I wondered in dismay if I was supposed to sleep on the couch. As I looked at the couch, my eye was caught by the big arch-shaped mirror that hung behind it. In the mirror I could see the reflection of a bed. Confused, I looked behind me. Nope, there was a dining table behind me, and the rooms to the side of it were the kitchen and the bathroom. Looking back at the “mirror,” I realized I was looking thru an arch-shaped hole in the wall. I wondered if I was supposed to crawl over the couch through that hole to get to the bed. (Hey, I was tired.) It dawned on me that didn’t make any sense, so I went to the long narrow hall I had entered through, and saw the door to the bedroom. If that door had registered at all when I first entered, I had put it down to leading to a closet. I unloaded from the car what I needed, and by that time I was shaking. I got my dinner started, meditated, then called Janet and Norma to spread the word to both our families that we had arrived safely – seeing that I wasn’t going to be able to send out the word over the internet. Then I ate and got ready for bed.
It felt nice to be in “my own place” rather than a hotel, and it seemed fairly isolated so I was hopeful that it would be quiet. I taped up a sheet over that archway between the bedroom and the living room – I like a bedroom to be like a cave, not open to the rest of the place. I turned on the hotel-like environmental controls in the living room to “fan,” then turned on my own two small fans in the bedroom, all for the white noise value. I took a bath and discovered that unfortunately the one thing this place lacks is really hot water. Then I climbed into bed, stuck a cold pack on my leg, and eventually fell asleep.
Until a damn bird woke me up at 6am. As I lay there listening to Tweetie-Pie, I thought it unfortunate that they didn’t allow cats here. I wondered how they felt about guns. A couple hours later I drifted back to sleep for another forty-five minutes. Then I got up and soon made my way over to Shepherd.
Some more about Shepherd (be prepared for some upcoming non sequiturs). They have about 45 SCI (spinal cord injury) patients here and they group them by age. When Gary is ready for the intensive rehab, he will be in the senior program, which is ages 50 to 65 (Gary asked if that meant he got a senior discount) and consists of a group of eight patients. I found it surprising, and ageist, to learn that they don’t take anyone older than 65 on the theory that such a person would not be returning to a vigorous lifestyle.
The case manager we’ve been assigned, according to Sheryl Hope, is a rehab-specific nurse, so she’ll be familiar with rehab-specific medical issues, unlike a “regular” nurse, so we should have less difficulty with BCBS from this point on, again according to Sheryl.
One thing I noticed here – the nurses are much quicker to answer the call button. While eating his lunch Thursday, Gary started choking, it seemed to me, so in a panic I pressed the call button. The nurse came right away. Fortunately Gary had managed to clear the food on his own by then.
Thursday the occupational therapists did some testing of Gary’s ability to sense touch – a light with a cotton swab, the dull and sharp tests with the two edges of a safety pin. No surprises – Gary’s sensations end at the T4 level, just as the x-rays would indicate. It is called a “complete” injury, because all sensation and movement is lost below it. They also did some spatial testing, to see if he could tell how his limbs were oriented. He couldn’t do this with his legs. Finally was some muscle testing. His right arm was weak (triceps, etc.) but this is felt to be because he was in that big heavy cast for so long, and not due to any nerve damage.
They are wanting to get him in a chair soon and wheel him around the facility and to the gym to do some therapy there, but can’t until the doctor looks over his new x-rays, taken yesterday (Thursday), and decides if Gary needs to wear a brace at first. Gary was disappointed because he had been told he would be in the chair this morning (Friday), but the O.T. came in and said the doctor still hasn’t looked at the x-ray. After that Gary told me he needed to listen to something funny and I went out to the car to find a tape of Car Talk. While we were listening to it the OT came back with some 3,4,5 pound weights and showed Gary some exercises to do. Gary cheered up at this (he told me he had wanted to listen to something funny because he was disappointed about not getting to get up in the chair) – he said it felt good to be getting in some movement again, instead of just laying there all the time.
All for now.
posted by Peg Daniels at 11:19 AM
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