Saturday, March 10

OK.. so I need a lot of practice with getting Kerrie in and out of bed. My ” Training” started today.. poor girl. I hate to have to put her through all this.

The PT & OT staff came in this morning, showed me how to help her roll over and sit up..she was getting frustrated with me, and kept giving me dirty looks, because I was doing it wrong, but I finally managed to get her up. Then.. was supposed to help her move to the edge of the bed, so she could get her feet on the floor. Yeah.. I need to work on my upper arm strength. She can move a little, but I couldn’t budge her. Maybe it’s because I was afraid I would break her or something… The PT person, put her arms around her and pulled.. and Kerrie was on the edge of the bed. The woman is probably about 5 feet tall… here I am, amazon woman towering above her, and I can’t get Kerrie to budge.

We let her rest for a minute.. as she sat slouched on the edge of the bed, feet on the floor and panting..Just getting her into this position is a workout for her. Then they showed me how to brace my leg against her right leg, for support, and position myself so I could help her to stand up. I had my left leg braced against her right, but must not have had my right leg in the correct place because Kerrie took her good arm and “forcefully” moved my right leg to where she wanted it!

Then, holding on to the lifting belt around her chest ( can’t put it around her waist because of the feeding tube and gall bladder drainage tube) we counted to three.. she stood up and I helped by pulling on the belt. Standing up seemed to be pretty easy, but I’m sure it wasn’t so easy for Kerrie…. but she did a lot of it herself. We then “Pivoted” a little at a time to position her correctly.. and then she plopped herself down in the wheelchair.

Once we did this, the PT person asked her if she wanted to get back into bed or if she wanted to do some work in the PT room. Kerrie looked at her with this look like she was saying, “Are you crazy? I didn’t go through all of this just so you could put me back in bed.”  Kerrie then told her she didn’t want to go back to bed and wanted to go do some PT.. so, we wheeled her down to one of the PT rooms.

We got her into the room and pushed her wheelchair up to a special bike. Kerrie sits in her wheelchair, puts her left foot on the peddles of the bike and they strap her right foot to the other peddle. While she’s able to peddle with left leg, her right leg moves along with it since it’s strapped in. She’s not actually doing the work with her right leg herself, but they told me that the message is still getting sent to her brain to move the leg.. and it will help build up the strenght and muscles in the leg. Then the OT person had her hold on to the “hand peddle” with her left arm and peddle the hand peddle at the same time as the foot peddle. I guess they thought she was working pretty hard today,and didn’t want  her to overdo it.. since they didn’t strap her right hand to the hand peddle.

This was obviously a lot of work for Kerrie as she was breathing hard, breaking a sweat and her face mask was getting soaking wet. So, after about 10 minutes they asked if she was ready to go back to bed and this time she said yes.

Getting her back into bed was an experience.. Have to get her positioned properly, hold on to the lift belt and on the count of three she tried to stand up and I tried to lift. We were not successful the first time. Kerrie was so worn out from the bike that she did not have the strength to help with standing, so it was all on me. We counted to three again and I lifted with all my might.. which meant it was a very slow process..

 Got her up, turned her and then put her on the edge of the bed.. Unfortunatley, I was too close to the edge and she wasn’t back far enough to get repositioned in bed. I tried to move her back further, but couldn’t budge her, so the OT person had me lay her down.. She was almost doubled over, with her right leg hanging off the side of the bed, and this must have really hurt because she started crying and telling me how much it hurt. I felt just aweful..

We couldn’t get her repositioned, so there was nothing to do but pull her up in bed by the sheets. I kept saying I was sorry and she just kept crying.  The OT person told me it would get easier and that the most important thing is that I use all my strength.. and not be afraid I was going to break her or something like that.

I’ve got to learn to do this properly.. within the next week I could be home, alone, with Kerrie and there will be no one there to help me if I can’t get her up or down properly. Mom’s taught me a phone number that I am to call, if this happens.. and I just hope I can remember it. The number is…. 911

I thought she was kidding, but she’s serious. OK.. I had better put them on speed dial.

Going back to the hospital now and going to try to get Kerrie out of bed again. A little nervous to try this without the PT & OT staff there.. but need work on this. Kerrie says she trusts me.. probably because she’s in the hospital already and we won’t have to go far when I really screw it up:)

I told her that if I can get her out of bed this afternoon, we’ll sneek out the back door of the hospital and head to the pub down the road.. I even told her I’d wear a hospital gown too, so that she’d just blend in with the crowd.

We definately won’t be going to the pub, but maybe we can make it for a walk through the halls… keep your fingers crossed I can get her back into bed without having to hit the emergency call button…..

 Jenn