Accomplishments

A couple big accomplishments today:

Today while my doctor was in visiting him, my dad started screaming and getting very teary. My dad’s doctor was very confused and didn’t understand what was going on. While my dad’s doctor was talking, my dad had managed to flip his left hand over, as he has previously been able to do with the right. He had never done this before, and was extremely excited. After explaining this to my dad’s doctor, he himself got very excited and couldn’t believe it. In his probably 30+ years of being a doctor, he had never been present for a first such as this. He was so glad to be able to be present for such an event. He thinks my dad is making excellent progress, and moving surprisingly quickly. 

Another first today, happened in occupational therapy earlier in the day. My dad’s occupational therapist put a band around my dad’s hand with a spoon attached, as he doesn’t yet have control of his fingers. They practiced bringing the spoon up to his mouth on his own. He then proceeded to feed himself a whole chocolate pudding. 

Later that night, he was able to feed himself his whole dinner with this wrist spoon, with a little help as he was tiered from the whole day of physio.

He is making excellent progress! He gets so excited every time he gets to eat something. Because he is on a puree diet, and isn’t eating enough calories as of yet to support his body requirements, he’s still got the peg tube in his stomach providing nutrition. Once he is able to eat enough on his own, they will remove the peg tube from his stomach.