Family Planning Day

Today was family planning day at Park Terrace. It is the day that the whole team of therapists get together with Sam's loved ones and tell us how she's doing, how they have been working with her and what their goals are for her. Wendy joined me as part of Sam's extended family and together we met the physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, recreational therapist, nutritionist, cognitive therapist and some of the head nurses as well as the social worker. We learned that the speech therapist had started feeding her some small portions of pureed food and applesauce last week and that she was swallowing well. Sam sometimes though can become quite distracted and when that happens she can't swallow, but otherwise she was doing okay. The other therapists also had experienced the same issues with Sam, i.e. that she becomes distracted easily and then can't focus on the therapy. However, over time, they have already seen some improvements and hope that it will continue to change. Her physical therapist is now just dealing with her trunk strength. As soon as she gets stronger, she will work with her on standing and then walking. The occupational therapist is focused just on some simple tasks at the moment like combing ones hair and washing ones face and the cognitive therapists deals with people in groups and tries to have them look at pictures, current events, etc. The recreational therapists stayed with us after the meeting to find out all of Sam's interests, and I must say it was hard to describe them all. I was really pleased with the team and to know that they are really concerned with getting to know Sam and helping her. After the meeting, we went to try to find Sam who was in between therapies in the hallway. She was sad today and very tired and told me a couple of times that ...she needs to take things slow.... I assured her that she could take things as slow as she needed and thanked her for reminding me that I too needed to slow down. I was reminded of what one of the therapists had said earlier... that when the patients start to improve they actually get worse...meaning that when they become more aware of their situation and surroundings, understandably they start becoming more upset, troubled, etc. I think Sam is starting to improve.