We are enjoying our time back home, and boy, enough stuff has been happening in the election law world this past week or two that Derek is definitely glad to be able to concentrate on work full-time now that I’m home. But the saga of Annie’s care is continuing to frustrate us. Today is her eleventh day with no professional rehab, and based on Dr Raskin’s protocol, she should still be inpatient, receiving 3-4 hours a day of therapy…
We heard late Friday afternoon that Shirley Ryan had finally gotten their act together to fax over a new referral to our PT provider here at Memorial Hospital. Obviously they didn’t have time to look at it before the weekend, so I called first thing this morning to make sure Memorial had the correct referral in hand. It was only for 2-3 times a week of therapy, so I spent the morning calling Dr. Raskin’s surgery nurse every ten minutes to try to get direct new orders from him. Before I got in touch, our PT office called back to say that we’re scheduled for an evaluation on Thursday morning, that they will schedule us for 5 days a week (because I made sure they had a copy of the post-surgery protocol) and that as soon as Jeff gets the plan written up, they’ll send it to our pediatrician, Dr Griffin, to sign off and submit to insurance. So…while it’s been eleven days without rehab, hopefully by the beginning of next week, we’ll be back to working with Jeff and Lori and Memorial Children’s Therapy and hopefully starting to correct some of the regression she’s been having.
Annie continues to be resistant to working on therapy exercises at home. She wants to play with dolls and listen to audiobooks and read with her siblings and maybe take walks, but try to get the girl to do a sit-to-stand or 20, and she really doesn’t want to. Prayer request is that she cooperates so that we can keep strengthening her muscles!
The good news is that I took her in to Dr Griffin this morning at 8 am to talk things over with her and have her take a look at Annie’s incision. I had so many nurses telling me so many different things that I just want to go by what our pediatrician tells us to do from here on out. We’re still a ways from being able to immerse it or swim, but she says that it’s healing well, albeit slowly. She signed a handicapped parking application for us, so we’ll have a tag for Annie for the next few months of walking with her walker. And she is as eager as I am to get Annie back in rehab, so she will have her eye out for the therapy paperwork and will be sure to sign it and get it back to them asap so that we can get going.
Thankful today for another wonderful pediatrician here in Indiana. I’m beyond frustrated with my inability to reach any of the doctors in Chicago to help us out the past week and a half, but Dr Griffin is on Annie’s team 100%. Thankful for Susie’s good health report today–I was back to see Dr Griffin this afternoon for Susie’s annual well check (she’s on an earlier schedule for all that than the rest of the kids because of needing to get in early for ENT referrals last year), and Susie has broken the 5 foot mark by 1/4 inch (woo hoo!) and is in perfect health besides her hearing aid and glasses. Thankful that the rest of the kids are happy and healthy! Thankful to be back at Redeemer yesterday, where Pastor Brian’s sermon on the tongue was very applicable to our family at this time (ahem). Thankful that I got to make it to my foster/adoptive moms monthly support group last week, since I was home, and that someone had donated a bunch of cereal for adoptive families, so I walked out with four boxes of cereal that have been a blessing for breakfasts while we have no kitchen. Thankful for the good weather that has allowed us to walk Annie around the block to practice heel-toe, toes-face-forward steps.
Continuing to pray over you all and this process! you are not alone!