Little Improvements--Will It Be Enough?

I am all a jitter. This will be a telling week: Rehab is to reassess Bob to see if he can continue therapy. We have a meeting with the case manager on Weds and I pray he makes the cut.

Whatever they say, I am seeing improvements. Little improvements, but improvements no less. They are:

Bob on the NuStep

Physical Therapy: He took a step. A little step. But a step. (See post below). Also, his resistance has nearly doubled on the Nu Step machine. (see photo left). He even wanted his right hand strapped to the machine. Sorry the photo is a blurr, but he was moving so fast! (ha ha) Still, he pales by comparison with the other patients on the nearby machine.

Occupational Therapy: Feeling in his right shoulder. He indicated this by touching his shoulder and saying "warms", then touching his arm below the elbow saying "cold". This did thrill the Occupational Therapist, who then told me that sometimes the arm comes back in increments of about 1/2 inch a month starting at the shoulder. And this weekend, when we did his "shrugging" exercises, I believe I detected a slight twinge in the muscle of his shoulder near the neck. Or was that my imagination?

Speech Therapy: He's speaking more sentences. Short sentences, but clear sentences, and this is an improvement over just saying one word or a bunch of garbled junk. At therapy, when he doesn't understand a question or doesn't know the answer, he used to say "huh?", but this past week, he was saying, very clearly, "Come again?" and "I don't know." or once, "I have no clue."  This morning, he said to me, "Turn the radio down." Still, he has a lot of problems identifying objects and finding the right word. On Sunday, he wanted water, but kept asking for "socks". Also, his memory is still spotty. And don't even ask about the reading comprehension....

Swallow Therapy: He swallowed over 10 teaspoons of Italian ice on Wednesday. An improvement over his former record of six. The therapist said his swallow reflex "looks" better, but won't know for sure until another swallow video is done. But on Thursday, she tried apple sauce and he nearly choked.

So this is it. D-Day on Wednesday. And I'm scared to death that this is not enough improvement to keep him in therapy. Because without therapy, what the heck will we do?