Get Well Clarkie!

Hey everyone

Clarkie had a huge day today…he had his consultation with Dr Chris Campbell, one of NZ’s top Orthopaedic/Pelvic specialists.  He arrived with another ortho registrar and nurse and did a very in-depth examination of his movement in both pelvis and knee.  They then did a further examination of the many x-rays they did of Aaron on arrival in Auckland (approx 20!).

The end result is that as of today he has been given approval to be weight-bearing on his right leg (the broken side)!  Their recommendation is 20kg of weight for 2 weeks, 40kg the following two weeks then after 4 weeks he can put as much weight on it as he is able to.  Such great news.  He has also been given approval to use a walker as much as possible rather than the wheelchair at all times which he’s totally stoked about.  The team here were worried about the jarring from hopping on the walker (which he insisted was really just a ‘Clarkie Shuffle’) so he hasn’t been using one.

The interesting thing is that they are actually slightly concerned about his old knee injury and want to work on strengthening that also.

From here the Physical Therapy team at Rehab Plus out together a program that includes weights, strength and stability, on both legs for the very first time.  In fact Aaron had his first PT session this afternoon and he said it was awesome.

We have a family meeting on Thursday with the full Rehab Plus team including PT, OT, speech & language and dietitians.  This meeting will determine timing for Aaron to be at Rehab Plus and setting the goals to achieve that outcome.  The big ones for him are talking and walking.  Now that we are underway finally with working on the walking we need to get a timeline for talking.

Good news also from today is that Aaron discovered this morning that he can whistle – something that he couldn’t do in the ORL test last week when they put a camera down to his vocal chords.  On hearing that I said ‘poke out your tongue’ (sorry Mum) and discovered that he has more movement of his tongue to the left hand side.  This seems to be helping him form clearer words.  The most difficult letters are ‘t’s, p’s and b’s.  Still a long way to go but a good step.

Don’t forget that if you want to send Aaron a card or letter please send it to:

27a Lewin Rd

Epsom

Auckland 1023

New Zealand

And his NZ mobile number is +64-21-1790-118

Talk soon

Megan