So many things going on... finally, a break from it, the end of the year and quite possibly we won't make it back to therapy THIS year, due to bad weather. Thursday, it was raining badly, due to snow Friday. I was thinking I'd HAVE to cancel Friday, but maybe Thursday, too. I told Bob I was considering canceling PT & speech and he watched me keep checking the weather hour by hour report on the internet, and looking out the window. After about 2 hours, he looked at me and said, "I think I'll take a paid vacation day today". I could see the little twinkle of hope in his eyes like maybe I'd go for it, but said, "Nah... we'll go to day". He was mad the first 1/2 hour of therapy, but then I told him we would definitely be canceling Friday. He was like, 'oh yea, you think you can just do whatever' but I said, 'no, this is me compromising. We had to come today, but tomorrow we will cancel'. So, he began to feel better about it.

He had a real upper Thursday, so he turned out very happy about going. He had this one girl he hasn't had for months, and she is the only one that would do a specific arm thing with him, where he lays on his back and she puts his arm up and and once she gets it straightened, she has him push against and resist her arm that is pushing first right, then left, then on the above side of his arm, then the bottom side. So, she sees how strong he can resist in each direction. Then she has him see how long he can hold his arm up, without assistance. The last time, months ago, was about 7 seconds. This time it was 68 seconds! One problem he has, is he is too close to it all, and he can't see his own improvements. But since he hasn't done this for so long, he finally got something that he could see the huge improvement. I suspect this new amount of upper arm strength is from doing the pulleys. I'm always saying, "don't just let the good arm drag the other one up and down, try to use the other arm muscle and make it do whatever it can". Looks like he got some work in at it afterall, I wasn't sure if he was getting any on the stroke side. Video of him using the pulleys with his bad hand clamped on (stroke fist) is here:

http://s139.photobucket.com/albums/q300/cozyhomelife/Bob%20Stroke%20Rehab/

I don't remember if I said this earlier, I know I wasn't getting here much. About a month ago, I noticed that he was getting to therapy and using the bike and then the leg press, both things that I had pushed them to use on him.... but..... then his time was up. I told them we had to re-structure his therapy sessions, as they were turning into very expensive exercise classes. So, I told them I wanted him to be doing the computer box, where you have to lean on the balance mat to center something on the screen, or move your leg just right to not break things on the screen and go thru the opening instead. I wanted work on the wooden stairs that they seemed to just keep avoiding (video of that on photobucket too) - which broke the way for real stairs. Also core exercises, balancing on the big ball, using the pulleys - on and on. So, things have picked up since then. I will write about another thing tomorrow, this is getting too long for you to read at once!