Current Hospital

Craig Hospital Room 205A

If you want to send cards...etc. the address is

Craig Hospital Patricia Schmidt 3425 South Clarkson St. Englewood, CO 80110
(303)789-8254

E-mail's, cards and notes will all go in Pat's new scrapbook.

We know your love is here. Debra

Mailing List Subscription Information The Aunt Pat Mail List

Pat had a busy day back. This morning she was up bright and early at 6:30am....or so I heard. When I arrived at 8:30 however, she had already wore herself out, and was asleep again. She started with P.T. with Jean at 9:00am, and they worked very hard! We informed Jean that yesterday she told Debra "I Walk," and so Jean thought we should let her try. She got her up on the parallel bars, and let her have at it. This really wore Pat out, and we decided that she was not really ready to walk yet. The desire is there, but we need to work on the balance, and upper body strength. That was a lot of work for Pat, and she kind of slowed down the momentum after P.T. . Next was O.T. and Speech, from what I understand she was not responding too much to the speech therapist, but sometimes it takes her a while to process the questions being asked. Next, Pat wheeled herself straight to her bed, and she and Larry took a nap.

When she woke up we went to speech class again, and did a little writing, and tracing of shapes. Pat's frustration with the lack of strength in her right arm was evident. She kept trying to put the pencil in her right hand to write, but it was a little too difficult at this time.

She got a nice walk outside, I think that she stayed out for almost two hours! She wheeled herself around a lot, and was ready for another nap around 4:00pm. From what I am seeing it is good for her to rest a lot in between therapies. Resting gives her a chance to collect herself, and get ready to do more work. The nurses say that it is normal to have people sleep so much, and that it will taper off in the next few weeks. That is all for now, I will probably update again tomorrow. Larry plans to get some work done in the morning, but I will be in with Pat bright and early.

Laura

Hi to all. Debra here. I believe Laura sent an update for today an hour or so ago, so I'll go light on the details.

Pat's been working very hard, and so have her Summit County friends! I wonder if the rest of our "auntpat" circle can even grasp the extent of what Betsy, KK, Jim, Mike, and all the rest did in the small matter of two weeks. Even after reading Phil's excellent summary (thank you Phil for helping us to recognize everyone's efforts) I didn't get the picture until I could see it visually from my husbands photo's of the event. It was a huge event made possible by a generous and compassionate Summit County community. Hopefully we can put a few of the photo's on the website.

My computer has been down. Sorry I wasn't able to get an update out on my Sunday afternoon with Pat. It was fairly quiet. She tried to say a few things, and wanted to take a long wheelchair tour of Craig, Swedish, and surrounding outside areas. My favorite moment was when she tried to express her desire to walk. Some of her coordination is now returning and she wants to rock and roll. Her tech that night, Chris, gave her a long explanation of why it will be a slow process.

The physical therapists will be working to be sure to build all the proper muscles in the right balance so that walking or other movements will not overly stress or injure weaker areas. Pat did not seem impressed.

On our tour we did brief research on the history of Craig and Swedish. Craig started as a TB sanitorium in 1905. The founder, Mr. Craig-but-I-can't-remember-his-first-name, sounded somewhat like Father Damien of Molokai, serving indigent men with TB and then dying from it himself. Swedish too was a sanitorium. I'm told that almost 90% of the people being treated at Craig have come there due to car accidents. A sobering thought. And there is often a high population of young men (more men than women) who participated in high risk activities, like biking without helmets. Watching all the people doing therapy is very inspiring.

peace to all...Debra