Tuesday Update

July 8
by Karen

We have news! Doreen will be transferred from Lutheran Hospital to the Rehabilitation Hospital of Ft. Wayne tomorrow morning. It is affiliated with Lutheran and is only about 2 blocks away from where she has been for almost 6 weeks now.

Carl and Karen visited the facility over lunch time today, but we had no idea she might move that soon. We were notified that she was accepted as a patient in that program late this afternoon. The facility is very nice and its whole focus is therapy; therefore, the program requires at least 3 hours of therapy every day. This includes physical, occupational and speech therapies. Patients are accepted only if they are evaluated as needing at least 2 of these and appropriate for that level of rehab. Doreen needs all 3 kinds of therapy and it was determined that she can meet the 3-hour expectation -- slowly at first, in intervals of 30 minutes, then moving to longer sessions as she gains strength and skill. We are very pleased that she has been accepted and will begin more intensive therapy. (However, we are not completely convinced that she is quite ready yet. Please send her all of the extra energy, stamina and determination you can spare!)

Her eating was a bit better today at lunch. She ate willingly and wanted to feed herself (soup, mandarin oranges, iced tea). That was great -- until it all came up when the physical therapist began his session with her by helping her sit on the side of the bed. She said she felt dizzy and then the nausea overcame her. This ended up stripping her of all of her energy and postponing any therapy until tomorrow. (Now we know that any therapy tomorrow will be in the rehab hospital and will include more than one chance a day.)

I will give you the address and other contact information for the rehab hospital in tomorrow's entry. I have been assured that anything that comes to Lutheran Hospital will continue to get delivered to her.

We hope to have good news to report tomorrow as we enter the next phase of our journey!