Day 130 - Rehab After One Week

Jan has been getting rehab every other day for a few days now. Things are going well but the progress is slow. The physical therapist's view is that it should not hurt. She can stretch but should not cause pain. She has added a breathing exercise and a pushing the chest out exercise. She has been doing these exercises daily along with getting two to three miles of walking in every day.

There are several people that have appointments at or around the same time as Jan. We've gotten to know them in a casual sense. Everyone is laughing and cutting up. One guy had a knee replacement, another has a prosthetic below the knee and several receive treatments for things that aren't as obvious.

Everyone seems to really like PT guy. Jan and I like him, too! A friend's daughter works for him. She's much more talkative at work than I've ever seen her at church or out anywhere else.

Not much of an update tonight. Still no callback from Bilkmore. Surprised?

Day 126 - 18 Week Journey

It has been 18 weeks since the accident, almost seven since the halo came off and things are slowly returning to normal. She rarely wears the collar but tends to carry it with her just in case.

Yesterday she had a haircut by her good friend that came and cut her hair while in the halo. The short hair that has grown in where she was scrubbed bald is now about two inches long. It sticks up a bit. You can also see blond hairs around the rear pin sites where I was treating it with hydrogen peroxide.

After the haircut, she had her night guard altered to keep her teeth set when she sleeps. It helps her TMJ. I noticed she does not move her neck when she turns to look left or right. She turns her whole body. She can move her neck, she just hasn't started to do it again. Hopefully, PT will improve that.

Another oddity was when she was reclined in the dental chair, her head doesn't lay back on the headrest. That is probably from her halo forcing her head so far forward. It didn't help her posture at all, either.

Since she has started PT and there is absolutely nothing that can be done to harm her by Bilkmore, I've been dealing with the patient advocate office again. The doctor admitted that the halo should have been put on by two people. That and the fact that the NP would not make any attempt to improve the situation and scared her more than she helped is fuel for my campaign against Bilkmore. Allowing a second year resident to perform a surgical procedure on Jan unassisted and unsupervised was terrible, allowing the NP to compound it was insulting!

I wish I had more to report on the Bilkmore issue but guess what? They haven't called me back in more than three days. The problem of returning calls by Bilkmore people is chronic. Completely unacceptable.

As a side note, I watched an episode of Fox's Fringe titled Inner Child that originally aired on April 7th. It is an X-Files like show and they used a halo with the vertical bars as part of a prop device. To someone familiar with them, it was obviously a halo ring and bars.