This place is Sheltering Arms Rehab Institute. It was a place I called home for a month. I learned how to be a functional human being again! I learned how to walk with support from a vector. I learned how to eat again and she started me off with "yummy" puréed foods. I learned how to write again. And most importantly, I learned how to speak again!!! I had a wonderful speaking valve hooked up to my trach.
Sitting here, I am an emotional wreck. I know my doctor no longer works here. I haven't heard anything of my therapists though. But I'm here thinking about our drive to the greenhouse down the road. And thinking about our lovely walks in the garden. This place will always have a special place in my heart.
Before coming here though, I did see my ocular plastic surgeon. My eye is looking great and healing well! My one eye has a low eye pressure of 8, but he didn't see any concerns with that. I also have 20/20 vision in both eyes now! See, I'm improving.
Now he did tell me that when I see him again in two months he MIGHT tell me that he wants to work on my other eye. That I'm at risk for damaging my cornea in that eye. Because right now, my cornea on the eye he operated on looks great!! I no longer have to wear a patch to bed - thank goodness! But I'm still to put in my eye drops and have my husband put in my ointment at night.
He also spoke on facial reanimation again. He said right now it's not a possibility, but that doesn't mean it won't be. Maybe far in the future. Because those surgeons need a sensory motor nerve that works in the face and they take it and stretch it from one side of the face to the other.
Them a few months down the road they take part of a nerve, muscle, and artery from your thigh and hook it up in the side of the face that isn't working. Now the paralysis won't clear up immediately, but six months to a year you will start to feel sensation in that part of your face again and feel it starting to move!!
Depending on your paralysis there will likely be a phase two after a year. But I'm not sure if I'm that far into my paralysis.
It definitely gives me hope that MAYBE one day down the road I can have this surgery.
Do me a favor?
Please pray on it!! Thank you!!
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻