Journal: January 24, 2012

Today started a few times - though as they say, the third time is the charm.

The first time I woke up feeling nauseated and my stomach wouldn't let me go back to sleep.  I think it was a bad case of gastric reflux which I'm happy to say I don't get very often, but with the burning and the coughing, I didn't want to disturb Stew (first night sleeping back in our bed since the accident - now that his hands aren't as sensitive, I felt like it was safe to return.  Though as he points out, if I hit him during the night it's normally his feet.  I may start out vertically on the bed but by the time morning comes I'm diagonal.  LOL).  I went out to the living room and read for awhile before finally being able to go back to sleep.  Stew woke me up when my alarm went off at 6 - yeah, not getting up yet, still had an hour before I needed to get up to get ready, so I went back to the bedroom and went back to sleep.  Stew woke me up again at 7 - with my breakfast waiting for me.  Fried egg on toast with OJ.  What a sweet, sweet man.  He's trying to get back into a routine of doing things, like he was putting dishes in the dishwasher while I got ready - I certainly won't be fighting him on this.  HA!

It was off to therapy then.  The therapist is really pleased with the progress he's making in both movement and strength in his hands.  The normal tests:

Steering wheel, additional one pound on each side:
Right: no change
Left: better by 10%

Door Knob, additional one pound:
Right: +10%
Left: +22%

Screwdriver, additional one pound:
Right: +47%
Left: +31%

Key, additional one pound:
Right: +51%
Left: +8%

She thinks he's making incredible progress in these areas considering his injury happened only one month ago.  The one worry is that the skin on his right hand hasn't changed in a week.  It seems to be at a standstill.  This was a bit discouraging for both Stew and me.  We've been doing what the doctors have told us to do, but nothing's happening.  He has a doctor's appointment on Thursday, so we'll find out then what they want to do about this. 

He started heat therapy today on the left hand to stretch out the skin.  She ace bandaged both of his hands in a closed fist to help with stretching and the left one she put under the heating pads today.  He'll eventually be doing this with both hands.  She gave him gloves that will mimic this wrapping which was kind of funny considering the modifications she needed to make to the glove just to get it to fit him.  We weren't surprised that extra large didn't fit.

On the way home we stopped at the grocery store.  We had lunch - warmed up leftover hamburgers from the other night's dinner.  Then I made him take a nap.  He slept for a good hour.  He needs all the rest he can get.

He got up and we took care of his dressing changes.  We watched our DVR'ed shows:  House and Castle.

Made dinner - tacos.  That's five days without fast food.  Yay!

Finished up the night watching Boardwalk Empire - Stew's still liking it a lot.  I'm kind of neutral about it.  It's not bad, it's not good.  It's okay. 

We'll just read the State of the Union tomorrow - it's what we normally do.