Good morning dear family and friends!
Quick introduction for those of you who may not know me: I’m Joy and Gary’s son Marc’s wife Caitlyn. I’ve held various positions with my medical career currently working as an occupational therapist, rehabilitation therapy support, and personal care assistant. I share this background to give some context to the more rehab therapy/medical flavor🍦 of updates that I will provide.
First let’s all just get on the same page about the levels of care our dear Joy has received so far.
Joy is currently at a hospital, Ascension Sacred Heart Bay, in the intensive care unit or ICU which is the highest/most critical level of care. She’s doing so well after her surgery that she’s been able to receive therapy services while in the ICU which is great 🥳
She’s getting:
PT: physical therapy. They are primarily focusing on her gaining back her big muscle group 🦵 (gross motor) strength and endurance that are needed for things like rolling in bed, sitting up, standing and sitting down, walking and so on🏃♀️.
OT: occupational therapy. They are focused on her hand and arm 💪 strength/movement especially in her weaker right arm and relearning her basic self-care 💄👄 skills. As able and in context of her other needs, OT works on a lot of the small muscle groups (fine motor ✍️) of the hands. OTs role may change a lot as her skills progress (such as adding in cognitive activities) and may seem to overlap with speech or PT, but it’s a close collaboration.
Speech or SLP: speech therapy or speech language pathology. They are working on two distinct aspects of Joy’s care. Speech was initially involved with her swallow study and may continue to monitor/intervene as needed since Joy was not able to eat 🥧🍨🍪 by mouth for so long. Speech therapists can work to improve the safety and quality of her swallow as needed. Second and the biggest, speech therapy is going to be a key driving force for Joy for working on her cognitive 🧠 skills and her language. Speech is the type of therapy that helps with aphasia 🗣️
Now, she’s doing so well that she’s ready to more out of the highest level of care to a lower level of care while still in the hospital, called a step down unit. She’s going to keep getting these rehabilitation therapies at the hospital until she can transport to MN.
Also to clarify, just before her brain flap surgery, Joy was at Select Specialty LTAC which is basically like staying at the level of care just below an ICU but for a longer period of time while receiving therapy. There are very strict criteria for going to an LTAC. We are so grateful Joy no longer meets this criteria now 5 days after surgery, meaning she’s doing medically so well she no longer needs to go to an LTAC!!!
The next level of care then is inpatient therapy. It may seem confusing because currently she’s 1) inpatient already and 2) already receiving therapy. I know, seriously they could have been more creative with their terminology.
Inpatient rehabilitation, or inpatient rehab for short, is a specialized program requiring strict criteria to be eligible. The short story is again that Joy will have the opportunity to do 3 hour of therapy per day. For someone recovering from a major brain injury, this is intense but crucial. She’ll get OT, PT, and speech 5-6 days per week and stay at the hospital full time. She will get nursing care and doctor visits there but not as intense of a level as she is currently in the ICU or step down unit because they need her to be medically stable enough to be in inpatient rehab to focus on therapy.
I will post a second update that has more specifics of what our family has been working to coordinate in MN to bring 🎉 JOY 🤩 to MN 🎉 soon!