Friday 17th October 2014

Well we are all kind of in a holding pattern. Gerard is still a resident at the Austin and will remain there until the staff at Royal Talbot are trained in how to care for someone with a ventilator. That may take anywhere from another 3 – 6 weeks, so we wait. Gerard is still in good spirits most of the time. He sits up in the wheelchair for a fair bit of the day now and is eating very well (especially lollies and chocolate, the contraband that we have taken into the hospital and hidden in his drawer). On Wednesday “the girls” (OT and Physio) took him downstairs to the café for a coffee. This was his second time downstairs and was far less overwhelming than the first try and he loved it. We are going to try and see if we can get enough staff together to take us down for a coffee over the weekend. We had a bit of a disappointment last week when Gerard was tested to see if he was a candidate for diaphragmatic pacing (which would allow him to breathe on his own during the day) Unfortunately, the results were not promising. The doctors will test again over the next couple of weeks to see if there is any improvement. I think we both were not getting too excited but really hoped that it would be a possibility. (having said that the ventilator is still doing a great job!) I think we have bounced back and its onwards and upwards. This afternoon was exciting as the Occupational Therapy team bought over a computer with Voice recognition software on it. Gerard took to it like a duck to water and has requested I bring his passwords so he can set up Skype and his email. On Monday we have an expert on eye recognition coming over from South Australia to see how he can help Gerard turn the lights and TV on and off. He is enjoying audio books on the Ipod mainly ones on marketing but has also listened to a series on mindfulness and is reading Zac’s year 11 text The Lieutenant. No other hot gossip really. Just looking forward to visitors and getting his new loan toy set up