Our Last Week Here

We were excited to be heading into the last week for therapies and injections. We feel so blessed to be having this experience. Trish is focused on pushing herself even further each week and started the week with a bang. Again, she gets to work out with her therapist two hours a day at least 4 times a week. We wish she could work out this much with her therapists at home, but it doesn’t work that way once we are back to using our insurance. She will do it at least 2-3 times a week for one hour sessions. That is all that our insurance will allow. So Trish will also work out with her friends and we will put to use things that we learned here so she can work out at home also. The therapists here have been great. We have had the opportunity to work with several girls and we love them all. They all bring their own techniques and styles and we have learned from all of them. This week Trish has had the opportunity to work with a different therapist named May. The things she has Trish doing are amazing. She focuses a lot on the mental side of things, getting your brain to connect with your muscles. This is so important for Spinal Cord Injury patients. The way she explains things really clicked with us. She stresses “WTF” (she is quick to point out, “not the bad meaning!”) what she means is Watching, Thinking, and Feeling. When you are trying to reconnect things you need to be able to see the movement you are trying to do (they always use a mirror), you need to be thinking and concentrating on what muscle you’re going to be using to do these movement, and finally you need to feel these movements. Trish can’t feel her legs moving so it is important for her to feel where her muscle is contracting with her hand. This is all so important as Trish has not done these movements in over 2 years. She also stresses the point that therapy happens all day every day. If Trish stops and thinks about it she can make any normal life activity a therapy activity. In every movement that Trish does, she needs to push herself to do more and more with her core and legs. For example, instead of just picking up her legs and moving them around, she needs to think about the movement and concentrate on the specific muscle needed to make the movement.

Trish has been pushing herself very hard throughout this whole experience and it really shows. Her core strength has greatly improved. You can see this in everything that she does. We have learned that even though her connections and muscles in the legs are weak right now, she needs to use her strong muscles (her core) to help her weak muscles work. To that end, this week Trish has been moving all over on the mat without touching her legs, something she has never done. She was even able to get down to her knees on the ground by herself without touching her legs and then was able to get herself back up onto the mat when the mat is 2 feet off the ground again without touching her legs the whole time. During all this the therapist just watched her and gave no help but told her to figure it out! It was amazing to watch Trish be able to do this. This is really hard to explain, but it was so cool to watch. My description doesn’t do justice to how hard this is! For the whole day on Wednesday Trish wasn’t allowed to touch her legs with her hands, they were enemies for the day! She also had to move herself from a sitting position along the side of the mat/table all the way to the other side around a corner without touching her legs. The therapist and I and of course Trish herself were so proud.

Trish has also been standing for nearly an hour each day for the last few therapy days. It has gotten easier for her to find her perfect position. When everything lines up just right Trish is able to put more weight on her legs and less in her arms. She has to work hard to relax her neck and arms because it is very tough to mentally think about how to connect and contract all of her muscle needed to stand up. On Wednesday she was able to repeatedly go from a sitting position to standing tall with only someone to lock her knees. There was always a therapist behind her to help guide her if needed. As Trish is finding her good P&A (Posture and Alignment – another term used by May) quicker, she is able to spend more time standing, which she loves.

Trish had her last therapy on Thursday. Everyone is so proud of how hard Trish worked and how much she has been able to accomplish while she was here. It was hard to say goodbye to all of the therapists. She has bonded a lot with some of them. They want to keep in contact so she can share her progress along her new journey at home.

Trish also had 2 injections this week that went well. These injections were stem cells that were derived from her bone marrow. She also got 2 IV’s of the bone marrow stem cells as well. The main difference in these injections is that the cord blood injections and IV’s consist of about 9 million stem cells. The bone marrow injections contained 20 million stem cells each and the IV’s contained 40 million stem cells each. By the time everything was done Trish received a combined 16 injections. She had 10 in her spine and 6 IV’s. We can’t wait to see the results of the stem cells on Trish’s body. Again, it can take between 4-6 months to see what the results will be. So in the meantime Trish will be working out hard and maintaining her “Hope”. We believe that more good will come out of this. Trish wants other Spinal Cord Injury Patients to hear her story so they too will at least have another option to try if they choose to.

We are excited to go home on Saturday. We miss our boys, family, friends, and pets.

We will also miss all the wonderful people that we have met on this incredible journey.

We had a farewell dinner with some of our friends.