I've posted on here before about the difference between a "complete" or "incomplete" spinal cord injury. There's a lot of disagreement within the medical community about what classifies as complete or incomplete-for some, anything short of a severed cord is incomplete, for others it has more to do with the neurological function (or lack thereof) below the level of injury. Jason has had mixed results with this classification. On his admittance to Santa Clara Valley Med, the resident who examined him said he was a complete injury, and then proceeded to outline a rather dire prognosis: no walking, limited gains back in motor or sensory function...get use to the chair, essentially (I have seriously negative feelings towards this particular doctor...Jason refers to him as my nemesis, but, I'm sorry, you don't say that to anyone 5 days after a massive accident). By the end of his stay, another doctor indicated that, because of the tremendous gains he made while in rehab, he was actually an incomplete injury. This doctor never changed this classification in Jason's records, though, so he is still technically a complete. At a lot of levels, this is just an issue of semantics. What Jason is actually classified as doesn't matter much-he's working hard, making a ton of progress, and getting back to living a "normal" life. Down the road, however, the complete/incomplete distinction could become important. While we've not yet experienced this, we've heard from others that insurance will deny therapy and other services to those with complete injuries. So, we've been talking a lot lately about getting in touch with his doctor (no small feat...I've been playing phone tag with that office for weeks now) and trying to have Jason officially re-evaluated. Better to deal with it now before it becomes a big issue with insurance.
In other news, Jason is doing really well. I'm adding some videos to the post to show what he's been up to. He's still getting back sensation and motor function. We've found that, of late, he gets motor function back before sensation. He's still working hard towards being able to get the leg braces in January/February. I don't think this will be a problem.
Work is going well for him-he's up to 4 days a week in the office and will begin using the Google shuttle next week. He's actually going to meet the shuttle driver and try out the ramp tomorrow afternoon.
Watch carefully...Jason is using his hip flexors to move his leg around :)
SCI-FIT workout
Love you all!
Ashley
No comments:
Post a Comment