The Road To Recovery - Week 22

"Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again." - Adrienne Rich

Our sweet cherished Alysha Rose Smith is recovering from a post surgical complication that put her into cardiac arrest and into a coma for 7 days.  She emerged from the coma with severe brain damage.  This website was created to update friends and family of Alysha's progress along the road to recovery.  Please join us as we support Alysha on her journey.  (For earlier details, like the history behind this medical nightmare scroll to the bottom of the blog and click "older posts.")

December 21/12
Heading Home for Christmas
     Alysha had a great day in therapy today and headed home for the holidays one day early.  For the next week all the Christmas festivities, visiting, shopping, eating will provide all kinds of therapy for Alysha and her family.

  

December 20/12
Alysha continues to adamantly refuse Botox injections to help with her spastic muscles in her left wrist and arm.  She has been working hard on her arms in therapy.  She now works on a recumbent bike that works her legs and her arms (see picture below).  The therapists offered to support Alysha by holding onto her left hand but Alysha refused their help and went on to do the exercise on her own.  Alysha is eating full servings of food now, so there are no further worries about the feeding tube remaining out.  Below you will see pictures of the recumbent bike, parallel bars for walking, and the arm peddle machine Alysha uses in her physiotherapy sessions.

Alysha on the recumbent bike

Arm Peddle Exerciser

Parallel bars for walking practice. 

     

December 18/12

     Alysha has been pouring out the effort in her therapy sessions.  She is showing so much improvement in standing upright when she is walking.  She has started practicing a new exercise where she walks between two low parallel bars supporting herself with her arms on the bars with one therapist offering support from behind. She has also been practicing climbing up stairs and using the bicycle arm exercise machine. She has had speech therapy sessions with the Therapy dog, where she needs to speak words clearly enough for the dog to respond with the required actions.  Alysha can tell that she is speaking clearly when the dog does as she asks it to.