Nolan Powell – The Journey Toward Recovery, Nov. 27th
THE JOURNEY
November 27
“FAITH DOES NOT GROW IN THE HOUSE OF UNCERTAINTY”
They moved us from the Neurology floor to the Rehab floor today. It felt like a huge move as we began the long road toward getting the use of Nolan’s arm and leg back. The surgeon , Dr. Meyer, told us he was hopeful Nolan would get full use back, but sitting there looking at an arm and leg that were, for all practical purposes paralyzed and not moving, seemed overwhelming. Nolan went through a preliminary assessment by quite a few people for the rest of the afternoon. There was Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, and Physical Therapy.
The Physical Therapist worked first stretching out all the muscles because the right leg stays either straight while in the bed or bent while he is in the wheelchair. Then after the muscles are stretched out he asks Nolan to concentrate hard and try to get his leg to move the way he commands it to. Right now the leg will not move no matter how hard Nolan tries to make it. The brain has been traumatized and it has just kind of shut down in this motor area. These exercises are called neuro-muscular and they feel that as the therapist moves Nolan’s arm and leg and Nolan concentrates hard on asking the leg and arm to move at the same time and they do this movement repeatedly over and over again, then at some point the brain will remember what to do and respond. In other words they are re-training Nolan’s brain to respond to these motor skills. This might take a few days or months.
As he keeps doing this the muscles begin what they call firing and then everything builds on that. These sessions last about 45 minutes four times a day. Nolan is exhausted after each one. The white belt around his stomach is a safety belt so we can hold on to him good when he is standing or moving since he cannot use his right arm or leg for support.
The Speech Therapist was not too worried about his speech as it had already begun to return pretty well. The Occupational Therapist was more concentrated on his arm and hand and getting the use of them back and he started asking Nolan to move his hand with quicker movements. Today the sessions were not very long but a lot of knowledge was gathered about what the doctors needed to do to help Nolan regain the use of his right arm and leg.
