Life in Rice Lake, WI: Less Swelling, More Smiling

Friday, September 28, 2012

Less Swelling, More Smiling

I took a break from the updates so I would not start telling you so many details

that I boring you all to death.

In short, this was a good week.

Wednesday I took off for Up North and left the folks here to have a little time to themselves.

Thursday we had a visit from Occupational Therapy. My eyes have really been opened to what these folks do. (By the way, I must have been completely out of my mind to think we did not need home health care when we were leaving the hospital! I am so glad that one of the Physical Therapists caused me to rethink turning it down.) Our Occupational Therapist is trained & certified in a treatment called Manual Lymphatic Drainage. It is a form of gentle massage that encourages the drainage of fluids which circulate through the body's lymph nodes. The first time she did this massage on Dad's arm, last week, I really thought it was a complete waste of time, as it did not look like she was doing much of anything. The very next day, Dad's arm had started to return to normal color and the swelling started to go down.

From Wikipedia: Manual Lymphatic Drainage was pioneered by Danish Dr. Emil Vodder in the 1930s for the treatment of chronic sinusitis and other immune disorders. While working on the French Riviera treating patients with chronic colds, Dr. Emil Vodder and his wife Dr. Estrid Vodder noticed these patients had swollen lymph nodes. In the 1930s, it was considered taboo to tamper with the lymphatic system due to the medical profession's poor understanding of this system. The Vodders were not deterred by this, and in 1932 began to study the lymph system, and developed careful hand movements to cause lymph movement. In 1936, after four years of research, they introduced this technique in Paris France.

Yesterday, our Occupational Therapist applied some Kinesiology tape to Dad's arm. I'll attach a photo. This is intended to lift the skin to provide 'channels' for the fluid to move back up to his lymph nodes. This morning Dad's hand is normal size without swelling for the first time in a long time. The OT also gave Dad an elastic sleeve to wear on his arm to provide light compression to also help reduce the swelling. All of this work is making a huge difference in Dad's arm.

And of course, once the arm is healed, we can once again try to use the anticoagulant therapy. As long as Dad's heart is out of rhythm, there is a risk of blood clot/stroke since the heart is not pumping the blood as it should.

This morning we had a visit from the Home Health Nurse. Dad had noticed some soreness in his mouth and she believes he has thrush, a fungal infection, often caused by inhalants. Dad has been using both the nebulizer and Advair. We didn't realize how important it is that he rinse his mouth out after each of these treatments, so that has caused this infection. Luckily it can be treated with a mouth wash type of medication and I will run to pick that up at Walmart later today.

Our Physical Therapist came today too. She put Dad through his paces. He got on my recumbant exercise bike for about 5 minutes. Once on the bike, he was able to ride quite easily. He had him work through his other balance and leg strengthening exercises too. It is pretty impressive how well Dad does, and today our PT said that she could really see improvement in Dad's overall condition. Yay!

The best medicine today, was a nice visit from Angie and her boys. Owen gave Dad several balloon animals to keep, Owen was blowing up the balloons and making them into shapes, very clever. He said that one was a sea monster. Ivan gave us some nice smiles and Ev got some time holding him while he was sleeping so sweetly.