Rapid Progress

This week I moved out of the SNF (skilled nursing facility) and into a more intensive rehab hospital.  Great timing considering the nerve control gains my spine has made in the past couple of weeks, as I can now capitalize on the increased mobility with more strengthening workouts and practical applications such as slideboard transfers and practicing standing.  In fact, just today, I managed a slideboard transfer with minimal set-up assist and someone to lift my legs into the bed, with all the hip-lifting and scooting being entirely done by me and my legs.  I also tried out a different standing machine, one that makes my legs and arms get me upright, instead of helping to lift me from the hips, and what do you know, I managed to stand three times for up to 45 seconds.  It was absolutely thrilling, and exhausting.  

My goals are to be able to stand with only one person helping for long enough to get in and out of my own car and to be able to always slide transfer with only one person helping, by the time I'm tentatively scheduled for discharge on March 27.  Accomplishing those two things will enable me to be transported in my own car instead of renting/hiring a wheelchair van, and allow me to navigate from bed to wheelchair at home without having to use a mechanical lift.  As quickly as I've been progressing the past few days, I think those goals are quite realistic.  

Aesthetically, this rehab center is much more pleasant to live in than my previous abode.  The food is MUCH better, there is a better staff-to-patient ratio allowing faster response times, and I get more therapy per day than I had before.  I don't get BBC America anymore though, so no more being addicted to Top Gear and Gordon Ramsay.  Not that it matters much, as I'm usually so worn out from working hard that I sleep through any significant blocks of downtime in my day anyway.

Tantalizing neurological tidbits:  thanks to a medicine mix-up, I missed a dose of coumadin during my transfer to the new place this week, causing me to need a bolster shot of lovenox, an extra blood thinner in addition to my usual pills.  For the first time since August, I felt the prick of the needle going into my abdomen and the subsequent burn of the injected liquid.  Maybe it's not too late to recover some of my extensively reduced skin sensation after all.

And on the cancer front:  I am trying to coordinate a follow-up MRI along with my upcoming chemotherapy consultation so the oncology team will be able to see how much of the tumors are left after radiation before they try to make any decisions about whether I should take the extremely dangerous Avastin chemo course.  The more I read about this drug and it's complications in other cancer trials and the way it will potentially interact with my blood thinners, the more convinced I become that it is not worth the risk for me to take it unless my cancer were extremely aggressive or highly likely to metastasize, neither of which are currently true, from what I understand.  Fingers crossed that radiation successfully shrunk the cancer to the point that chemotherapy becomes an unnecessary course of action.