Physio Session - April 8th

April 8th

Visit with Karla for the afternoon, my birthday. Thau is awake and able to greet us and active enough to want to move to a wheelchair and visit in another room outside of his hospital room. 

Dawn has been visiting and we wheel Thau down the hall to a common room, then to the physio therapy room. Thau is weary of his surroundings, gets cloisterphobic that triggers his anxiety. He takes anti-anxiety, anti-psychotic medication. 

He has had a few physio sessions, his mother explains they are extremely frustrating, the dead weight of his paralyzed left side, swelling of his hand, wrist, ankle and foot. Right side is weakened from being stagnant.

Karla, a dancer, helps encourage Thau by mirroring his exercises, we both count aloud with him as he tests his ability to stand with his two physical therapists at his side. We shoot hoops, as he practices passing a ball from one hand, and twisting his body to strengthen his right side, bearing the mobility against the deadweight of the left. 

I give Thau a claw from a polar bear paw, one that I got from an Inuit hunter when I traveled to the Canadian Arctic. Karla ties it as a necklace around Thau's neck and we create for it a symbolism of the claw will help steady Thau's spirit should feel he is sliding, as if on ice. He takes in the symbolism, and proudly repeats the story to his physio-therapist, carrying motivation for a few more exercises. 

When his body strains, and over-exerts, he flops over in a melting exhaustion and shallow breath. But there were triumphs as Thau was able to lock eyes with Karla and calmly count through his exercise. A few times he gave us a smile through his exhaustion, he would finally become upright, teetering for a brief moment, eye to eye with the rest of us. 

Evidently this was the strongest session, as his therapists observed. His physio schedule would be reduced in the next week or with complications affecting his strength.