Stryker Brigade News

When I arrived, I had to dump some stuff in Scott's room after first checking at Occupational Therapy to see if Scott and Tiffany were there. I was about ready to turn down the hallway leading to Scott's ward when I thought I heard something. I turned around and saw Scott at the elevators waving at me. I don't want to think about how far away he was and how much noise he made to get my attention. I held up the two small bags so he could figure out what I was up to and then proceeded to drop them off.

I made it back to OT before the therapist arrived, so no harm was done. Scott showed me more of the cards (they resemble the old, no, ancient, punch cards used to send programs to mainframe computers, only without the holes being punched) he got from his speech therapist. More on this later.

The OT task for today was a shopping trip. Scott had a list of five items. He was to find them, write down the prices for them and then total the prices to see how much money he needed to purchase them. The items were deodorant (no hints here--Scott is pretty fastidious given the resources), Kleenex (ask for it by name), a pair of white socks, cough drops and lotion. We went down to the VA store (short of a little PX/shopette thing) and Scott went over to where the personal hygiene products where. I figured this would be a breeze for him, but he seemed a little scrambled to me at times. For example, he picked up a box of Q-tips and then pointed at the lotion item on the list. The OT prompted him to keep looking and suggested some ways for him to scan the shelves for what he wanted. He eventually came to the deodorants and recognized them, but seemed to need some more prompting. She asked him what brand he uses and Scott immediately picked up the correct product. The therapist and I were probably both thinking the lack of context was screwing him up because we know he routinely applies this as part of his getting ready in the morning. Scott found lotion nearby and then turned around for the Kleenex. There must have been fifty boxes sitting there and it took Scott some time to get a box. Scott knew where to look for white socks and went to that location. He found women's sizes, correctly identified them as not for him, went to the other side of the display and grabbed a pair of men's socks in his size. The OT told Scott where to look for cough drops and he found them quickly, too. The bright side of the event was that he did write all the prices correctly, totaled them up and wrote the amount of change she would get for her ten dollars.

After OT was lunch and after that we went down to Prosthetics to try to get his helmet adjusted/carved on to make it fit. There would have been a long wait so it was suggested that we return tomorrow morning. Scott went back to his room and took a nap.

After the nap, Scott went to Physical Therapy for stretches, treadmill (walked for seven minutes out of ten at 2 MPH without touching the rails with his hands) and then went to a leg weight machine. He did various kinds of knee bends and lifts. He also did some leg presses before going over to the parallel bars for the balance board/football tossing event. Unfortunately, Scott is pretty tall and when he comes over the top with that arm of his, there's not much room for an arc to his throws. On one toss, he bounced the poorly stuffed ball off the clock on the wall, which objected to such rude treatment and fell to the floor in protest. Julie was able to get the clock operational again and we all grinned through another important safety lesson--"Secure clock before playing football in the house."

After I put the clock back on the wall, we went back to Scott's room. Julie had arranged an unrestricted pass with Scott's doctor, so now he can come and go pretty much as he can tolerate it. We discussed how we might use this new freedom tonight while Scott set up the card reading machine he got from his speech therapist. Apparently, he really likes these cards and the player for them. He shows as much interest in them as one might with a baseball card collection. He plays the cards by putting them in the machine so that it "swipes" them and plays the message. The last word in the sentence is the target word. The target word is also written on the card. If Scott said the word correctly, he put the card for it in a pile. If he gets it wrong, he keeps playing it until he gets it right.

After Scott finished his cards we decided to use the pass to go to the Mall of America, which is near our hotel and the airport. This facility is very large. In fact, it's large enough to have a Camp Snoopy, complete with a roller coaster, inside it. The retail areas are all around the Camp Snoopy location and go for three floors. We ate dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. This was significant as this was the same restaurant (only at the one near Sea-Tac Airport) where we ate before we left him on his R & R in August. Scott was somewhat self-conscious about his head (he takes the helmet off when he sits to eat, etc.) and was not enjoying himself. There was a children's birthday party at the next table and he didn't want to alarm them. He hit on the idea of putting up the hood of his sweater and was immediately much happier. After dinner, we walked around and shopped a bit. Tiffany bought some of that coffee (one of his words, by the way) Scott couldn't get the other day. He was very pleased with this. Eventually, Julie called for the shuttle bus as Scott was getting tired. We went outside to catch it back to our hotel. Scott, Tiffany and Alyson went back to the VA on the same bus.

ST