IT’S ALL ABOUT THE THERAPY, BABY!

Sunday, May 6 - We remain here at the Bow & Arrow Campground in Yulee, Florida. We are just north of Jacksonville, Florida and about 20 minutes from Paul's brother, John, who lives on Amelia Island.

We arrived here on April 5, for a short visit with John, but on April 11, Marsha suffered a mild stroke. She spent a short time in the hospital but returned home to the 5^th wheel soon after. She has been working hard at physical, occupational, and speech therapy, three days a week, on an outpatient basis. Her progress has been going well with only a minor set-back. She suffered through several days of exhaustion and even returned to the hospital emergency room for a check-up. There were no signs of another stroke, so it was assumed she was overdoing her rehabilitation or had come down with a minor virus. She needs to slow down and do some resting.

Marsha continues with her therapy and has an appointment with a neurologist on Tuesday, May 8. We are hoping that he will clear her to travel to our summer home in Ohio. We hope to depart on Wednesday. We are planning on taking three days, only traveling about five hours per day and will take the doctor's recommendation on what is best. We already have appointments with doctors in Ohio and will continue with therapy if necessary.

At physical therapy, Marsha spends the majority of her time on balance and strengthening her right leg.  She has numerous exercises she also does at home. 

At occupational therapy, her goal is to regain her fine motor skills. She does eye-hand coordination drills, as well.  Regaining strength is a major goal.

 

She’s been focusing on her writing skills.  This is one of the area of the brain that was affected by her stroke.

Adult coloring. Who would have believed? No Marsha! It was recommended as a great exercise for her fine motor skills.

Loss of her typing skill is one of the hardest pills for Marsha to swallow. She actually taught personal typing in high school years ago. She is anxious to regain this ability as quickly as possible. She practices everyday for short periods. Her forearm just isn’t strong enough to do much more.

Marsha uses therapy putty, containing small beads, as another fine motor skill exercise. It helps strengthen the fingers, as well.

This is an unusual exercise called mirror therapy. The mirror image ‘tricks’ your brain into thinking that your affected arm is moving like your unaffected arm. Mirror therapy involves the use of a mirror to create a reflection of Marsha’s unaffected arm in place of your affected arm during therapy. Our sister-in-law, Chris, a nurse, said it gets great results. Here she uses her left hand to trick the mind into thinking she is putting the stones in the slot with her right hand.  She does this exercise for three minutes, twice a day.

In speech therapy, she spends time on teaching lips, tongue, and throat how to make proper sounds. She learns how to use the diaphragm to make correct sounds. She has numerous mouth exercises to do and has made a notebook full of sentences to read out loud. Here she is reading the sentence out loud while watching how her mouth forms the words.

So in summary, Marsha is working hard at therapy and has shown considerable improvement. She is in good spirits and is nearly back to the happy, passionate, warmhearted lady we all love.

We hope our next post will be from Canton, Ohio, and we'll include a picture of Marsha working in her flower garden.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you back soon.  Have a great day!