Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Home-style Therapy


One of the side effects of Boo's strokes is an ongoing need for various kinds of therapy. For a long while we had a wonderful home health team that came to our home and worked with him. The physical and occupational therapists had an endless supply of exercises that helped him relearn lost skills. On the days they weren't scheduled to come, Boo and I did his exercises. Unfortunately, the exercises took much of the time he was awake and left little time for anything else. Still, this was for a season. This was Boo's time to heal. I've never seen anyone so motivated to be as well as he possibly could. Finally the day came when Boo “graduated” from home health services. We were ecstatic! Now, we could get on with our lives.

In the process of continuing with our lives, I began to notice that Boo was regressing a little. He was “losing” small skills that he had regained. After a short while, we realized that therapy needed to continue. For the first time, Boo was resistant. He wanted his life back not endless rounds of therapy. We had long talks about what was important to us: time together reading, talking, taking walks, praying, cooking, working together. Obviously it was time to rethink our approach to therapy and initiate lifestyle changes that would make ongoing therapy an integral and satisfying part of our life together.

This section of our blog is about the ways we are trying to integrate the therapies Boo needs naturally into our lives.

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