Ash and I back at Elwood …. Mike has his New Computer – Nearly back online

Ash and I are back at the blue house in Elwood. It is very hard being so far away but I think Ash is liking being home. At the moment Mike is much more stable so it is probably a good time to head home and get Ash back to a slightly more normal life. Lots of driving which is tiring but I think Charli and Russ are happy to have us home again.

This will probably be my last posting for a while, Mike has received his new computer which Tim has setup with the voice recognition software — a massive thanks to Tim (and his family for putting up with him working on this stuff for the past two weeks – thankyou!!).
Mike has been doing a bit of training with it over the past couple of days and we think he sent an e-mail tonight (it was to work to see if they have the software licence for Dragon!).
I think his aim for tomorrow is to post a message himself.
We are going to try to get a consultant in later this week who specialises in the voice recognition stuff to get him fully operational on the new machine.

Next target is a voice recognition phone — even though he assures me is fine to use skype. Telstra has done some investigation for us (thanks again Virginia) and recommended a couple of phones to try so will endeavour to get on to that this week.

Mike spent lots of time in his chair today which is great. We need to talk to the physio’s about how to manage his posture as his left arm is clearly heavier than his right and he gets a bit of a lean going which in turn hurts his back and neck. It is a miracle that he can drive it — I took it for a whirl last night and nearly took out my knee-caps on the wall (and I have hands and forearms that work!)!

We are still on operation “fatten-up” and he has another couple of appointments this week with the speechie to hopefully get the OK to eat most foods. Thankfully chocolate, muffins and biscuits are all considered ‘soft’ so they are OK!

On Friday the lovely OT ladies built Mike a splint for his left hand so that he could hold a pen or texta. He drew his first ‘humpty dumpty’ (bit of a standing joke with Ash). Anyway, it is up on his wall and we are hoping to post a photo of it with some video of him eating sometime tomorrow — please be warned … neither the drawing or eating can be considered pretty but we are very, very proud!
When asked whose humpty’s were better Ash just laughed/snorted and said hers were — I think she is probably right but she isn’t trying to draw them with her shoulder!

We are very excited about a delivery due at Talbot this week – a FES bike. It uses electrical stimulation to the legs (and possibly arms) to turn the pedals. Will see how Mike goes … I am almost convinced that his legs will just know what to do all by themselves!! This is one of the items on the projects list so it will be great to see how it works before we try to raise some funds to buy one. I am hopeful that he will be able to use something like this to do a bit of fitness work and to keep a bit of muscle tone for when those miracles turn up.

Will post the details of Mike’s schedule for this week sometime Monday (yeah, yeah – I forgot again. …. something about being a bit tired and having a few things on my mind??). He is quite busy tomorrow and Tuesday but we are trying to get him up in his chair each night for an early dinner with Ash so feel free to drop in then. Will see how he goes with some back-to-back therapy time over the next few days.

Thanks for the continuing messages of support and for his visitors – he really enjoys the interaction (I think I am getting boring!). Will be calling on a few folk to be in with Mike over the next few weeks as I need to spend some time with Ash and I need to get moving on the house cleaning and house mods.