| cliffsnotes: good news For those that depend on their significant others for facebook access such as myself, here's a cut an paste from Steph's facebook page on Tony's progress: June 5, 2009
Just wanted to update everyone on Anthony's progress.
He is steadily showing improvement. Over the past 2 weeks, he has regained some movement in his legs. He is able to pull his knees up towards his chest, kick them forward and extend his ankle. Yesterday they lifted him into a standing position with a standing frame. This allowed him to start trying to push himself up into a standing position and relearn how to balance himself with support from a body harness. His body tolerated the exercise well and he was able to flex his gluteal muscles for the first time. Once his body is able to tolerate being in the standing position for at least 30 minutes (without becoming too light-headed or fatigued) they plan to start him on the Lokomat (robot-assisted walking).
La-Z-Link There is also talk about getting him started with physical therapy in the pool, which I think will be very beneficial to helping with his balancing. Which reminds me- Tony's trunk muscles have started to activate as well and he was able to hold his sitting posture by himself for about 40 seconds on Thursday.
Another significant change this past week was that he has started slight movement in his wrists and his able to flex his thumbs well. He can also close his left hand into a fist, but tires quickly at this point in time. Yesterday, he also regained his triceps muscle in the left arm. Tony is very close to getting back on the computer through sessions with the technology. He has been working with a voice recognition software called Dragon Professional and has finally found a mousing device that works well for him. I just ordered his copy of the Dragon software and the mouse last night so hopefully he will be able to gain computer access in his room and also start building his own voice recognition database.
"Too dumb for opera, too smart for NASCAR." |
