Prognosis meeting
This evening I attended a meeting with the Rehabilitation Doctor, the Physio and the OT. After 6 months in rehab the Doctor was probably at a stage that he could give some kind of prognosis. I had been asking a lot of questions about why certain goals were being set, if Anita was getting enough physio and if the plans were ambitious enough.
I have tried to get this down as accurately as I can remember. The main thing he had to say was that ‘Anita had suffered substantial nerve damage and that her neurological recovery had virtually stabilised’. ‘Without this significant neurological recovery we are not being realistic with respect to her walking again’. ‘In the majority of cases similar to Anita they would not walk again’. When asked to clarify if Anita ‘would never walk’ he reiterated that’s not what he was saying but at the moment there was a lack of realism in the attitude to recovery. He was concerned that Anita’s whole mindset and goals were focused on walking and this was to the detriment of other improvements she could make. She needed to be focused on other things and would be disappointed time and time again if she expected to walk.
I was not expecting to hear what was said. Anita had been telling me that she had recently walked on her own albeit with all the strapping and quadrapod gizmo’s. It therefore seemed odd to consider she would never again walk. I made this point but what she is doing is apparently a long way from walking!