Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Hospital Transformations

The past two weeks were crazy busy for me as Tim was in the VA hospital in North Little Rock. We cannot sing the praises of this new doctor enough. He is incredible! They did inpatient physical and occupational therapy with him, but we also got many more things accomplished. They got him many aids that will help him function better. The hope is that if he stops trying to compensate for his lack of ability from his injuries by walking, sitting, and even stepping in and out of the shower with poor form, then it may decrease his pain level. They fitted him for braces for each lower leg/foot, and he can actually roll his feet as he walks with them. That decreases the extent of his limp. They ordered him a cushion that fits him well to use behind his back while sitting, and they got him another one to sit on. They got us a shower bench to help him get in and out of the shower with more ease, and to sit on rather than stand in the shower when he can't. Hopefully this will give him more independence to bathe himself on days that he otherwise couldn't. They got a toilet seat to help him get up and down from the toilet on days when he would otherwise need assistance. They got him a piece of equipment that looks like a giant fish hook with balls on the ends that he can use to work out the knots deep in his muscle tissue so I can rest my hands sometimes. They temporarily loaned him a Body Blade to use for core work. And they taught him exercises and games that he can do to work his core and extremities without overdoing it. They also convinced him to let me work with him on some exercises such as pilates, yoga, and tai chi. They have helped us get started on the beginning processes of getting him into adaptive sports. They got us connected with information on recumbent trikes and hand crank trikes. We hope to get him into Soldier Ride events before long. And they worked with him on memory skills, which brings me to another point. He has finally (5 1/2 years after the crash) been diagnosed with mild to moderate Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). I will never know why they did not evaluate him for TBI in the beginning. It took me pushing for it to get it done. We have known that something wasn't right, but he attributed much of it to his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and medications. As he switched medications, it remained. As we went through PTSD counseling, many problems got fixed or at least came to light to get worked on, but many remained. His memory is not there. There are daily occurances that show the memory failure. Concentration, focus, and comprehension are not good. These are why he had to quit school. He is unable to plan, control impulses in many situations, handle many social situations, and control certain emotions. This is all consistent with frontal lobe injury to the brain. PTSD just exacerbates the problem. Frustration occurs regularly because of his new lack of ability. He got out of hand with blaming others for EVERYTHING that goes wrong or isn't exactly the way he thinks it should be.

The good news on all of this.... discovering the problem and accepting it is vital to improvement, and that is what is happening. He finally understands that there is a reason that all of this has changed for him. He is gradually getting better on the "blaming others" problem. Although he still initially blames others, if it involves someone he loves he will now follow the blame with "or maybe it's just me." That is HUGE!!!! I cannot tell you how big a deal that is. That little bit alone has decreased my stress level tremendously. He still thinks that strangers are always doing him wrong, but he is learning that family is not out to get him. His family heard horrible things about me for so long that weren't true, and I heard horrible things about them that I have learned are not true. It was just his perception of everything. The other day he made a comment about some people who really mean alot to him. He was saying how much they have changed for the worst in the past 5-6 years. He said that all of them have lost their minds. I can now recognize this as a PTSD symptom, so I gently challenged it. I asked him what also corresponds with that time period that might affect the situation. He said his crash. So I followed by saying, "Are you sure that they have all lost their minds, or do you just perceive things differently now than you used to?" He thought for a minute and then responded, "You know, you're right. I don't think they have changed much at all. I think it's just that a different set of things bother me now than they used to. They always did these things, but I didn't really notice them because they didn't bother me back then." GIGANTIC STEP!!!! I breathed the biggest sigh of relief after that because I knew this was a breakthrough. He was finally seeing that it's not necessarily always everybody else's fault.

We still struggle with his son's mother trying to control everything, but Tim has gotten to where nothing she says or does bothers him. It's amazing what she can do now to try to make him mad, and he laughs and says, "That's hilarious. She really thinks I'm going to believe that." Then he'll respond back to her with a text of "Ok" to let her continue thinking she is one-upping him. He used to get furious over those things, and now he just laughs. In the past, the more she did like that the madder he got. Now the more she does like that, the more embarrassed he is that he ever had any kind of relationship with her because his brain is clear enough to see what she is really doing. A huge thing happened the other day that proved his improvements to me. The reason he and his son's mother divorced was because she found someone else while he was in Iraq. He found out about it two months before coming home, so when he got home he caught her. They divorced. The guy she was seeing was married at the time, and a couple of years later he and his wife divorced. Now the two of them are married and have a new baby together. That was a sore subject for Tim for a long time. Obviously if you are overseas fighting for your country and find out that your support system back home is betraying you, it's not something that you get over quickly. Now, though, he mentions regularly how thankful he is that things happened that way. He's a Christian, and he would not have divorced her for anything other than a biblical reason. She gave him that reason... that out. He didn't realize at the time that it was best for him, but now he is extremely grateful that it happened. The other day while doing laundry we found some Razorback scrub pants in a size large. I asked him where he got them, and he said he had no clue. They have just been in his closet for a long time, and he decided to wear them the other day when he was doing some stuff around the house. I asked if he thought they had been in his closet since his divorce seven years ago. He said yes. I laughed and said, "I have a feeling I know where they came from." He got this lightbulb look on his face and started laughing. He said, "I bet they were Barrett's and he left them at my house while I was in Iraq and he was over there with her. That is hilarious!" For him to laugh at that and see the humor in it rather than getting mad was HUGE! I was SO proud of him! (He's since decided to use them as a grease rag.)

So, for current news... we had a memory lapse last night that was very frustrating to him. We try to work together, though, to limit his frustration. He has gotten to where he tells me just about everything so we are able to remember together. He had called his son, and he got no answer. He left a voicemail message, then he texted her to ask where his son was so he could get ahold of him. (He often stays with his grandma, so Tim thought he might need to call there.) About 20 minutes later he got a "Droid" on his phone notifying him of a new message. When he pulled up the phone he did not see the message icon, so he thought the phone was just acting up. I told him to check to see if she had responded. He said that she wouldn't have anything to respond to because he hadn't texted. I told him he had, and he didn't believe me. When he pulled it up to prove to me that he was right, he saw that he had texted and the "Droid" was notifying him that she had replied. He was flabbergasted. He sat there thinking intently, and no matter how hard he tried he had absolutely no recollection of texting. Luckily that was a small slip of memory, but it was very frustrating to him that he could not even slightly remember it.

Today has been awesome! He woke up feeling great, so he has been doing things around the house all day. He started by cleaning, which was a huge help! It's hard for me to keep the house clean after someone who almost never leaves. It was such a tremendous help to me! Now he's outside trying to fix a piece of the house on the deck that was allowing water into the garage. I'm curious to see if he paces himself well. That is one thing his physical therapist is trying to teach him. His pain level tomorrow and the next day will tell us if he did.

I'm going to get on to my schoolwork to try to get some finished early this week. Thank you for reading!

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