Great Week at Kennedy!
What a fantastic week! It was everything we who were there with Aaron (Woody, Gina, Diane, & Denise) were hoping for and more. Aaron was surrounded with so much hope, energy, and positive attitudes from everyone he was in contact with this week; it was truly refreshing and energizing for all of us. His therapists, Kristen and Erin are obviously well qualified and take Aaron and his goal to someday walk very seriously. We didn’t have to listen to any speeches about the high level of Aaron’s injury and never heard the words can’t or won’t. Aaron worked very hard for 5 hours every day and can’t wait to get back there for 2 weeks beginning May 3rd. We were all very pleased to meet Dr. John McDonald (see pic below), the director of the International Center for Spinal Cord Injury at Kennedy Krieger. He stopped and talked with Aaron a few times during the week and talked with him about his progress, both present and what he believes he can accomplish in the future. He also took time to work with Aaron on moving his hands and fingers. Much of the week was spent using electrical stimulation on various muscle groups, riding the bike using E-Stim, and standing up in the stander/glider. By the end of the week he was able to move the “arm skate” (in the video on a previous blog) with his triceps and biceps on his own without E-stim! Yesterday he showed us how he can move his left thumb and today he was moving his right thumb. Not big sweeping movements, but definately controlled movement! We will be getting an E-stim unit for use at home soon, eventually a stander, and then a stim bike so that Aaron can work hard every day, not just at Kennedy. 🙂
There were 3 little girls at rehab all week that had a princess party on Friday and Aaron was invited; he got a necklace and we got to eat some cupcakes (see pic below). 🙂 I’m guessing that they were aged 2 to 4 and it was just amazing how focused and hard working they were. They really touched our hearts. 🙂
We arrived home on Friday evening, all of us pretty well beat! Thanks again Diane for staying the night so we could sleep. Only one nights rest and you were on night duty again. You’re a sweetheart! 🙂
working on biceps & triceps video
The above video is fairly large and will take a minute or two to load.