vá para trás

Well, I'm sure I haven't spelled it right, but I'm running out of titles other than "David Update" or "Please Pray." When we play cards with my parents, especially the Portuguese bidding game Pedro, if somebody goes back their bid my dad says something that sounds like "vi patrrazh." It means "going back." I checked an English to Portuguese Dictionary online, and "vá para trás" is the closest I can come. (Maybe one of my Portuguese family or friends can help me out here.)

David seems to be going backwards, losing ground, "vi patrrazh."

He's backed off on some of his exercises, thinking he was overdoing it, which was causing his intense knee pain. He's finally back at English Oaks getting really good, appropriate therapy - only once a week, though. In his last visit he had two therapists working with him at once - and another one jumped in who could see something wrong - something about the position of his pelvis as he walks. ALL THREE of them were then working with David at the same time, but David cannot feel or sense what it is they are talking about - even when they use a full length mirror and pictures of his posture to try to show him, he can't tell what it is that's different between what he's doing and what he should be doing.

Not only is it not getting better, but he seems to injure something now every time he walks or exercises at all - something that hadn't been happening in the first couple of weeks and months. We don't understand why it is happening now. He cannot walk as well as he did a few weeks ago. Tonight he went for a walk around a small block in the neighborhood (at most a quarter mile) and came back feeling he had sprained something between his foot and his shin - just from having walked - didn't twist it or anything. His limp is becoming more and more pronounced. He said to me the other day, "I think I'm going to need to go back to the cane." He said it feels like there is a muscle in the back of his left leg that should be there but just isn't there and that he often now feels like his leg is going to give way, and he is going to fall down.

David has had such good spirits throughout this whole experience. Even in the ER on the day of his stroke when he was totally paralyzed on his left side and unsure what the future held - whether he would be permanently paralyzed - and (at the very beginning) whether or not he would live - his comment was, "Well, I've got my voice and my right arm. That's all I need." Positivity is always his first response, and typically his permanent response.

He's been very diligent about following all advice given to him by medical personnel and also very diligent about doing his therapy homework. He's been working very hard. He saw progress coming quickly in the beginning, and now that he continues to work so hard to progress but finds himself losing ground he had gained, he is finally getting to the point of being quite discouraged. I can't say that I blame him. I'm certainly concerned too. So our prayer right now is for his spirits as well as for this to turn around in the right direction physically.

He keeps dropping things too. In fact, tonight as I was asking him what hurt he kind of jokingly said his feet hurt because he keeps dropping things on them - one of those things recently being a knife! (I hadn't known that until just now!)

One piece of good news is that David did hear from the surgeon's office in Sacramento again. They have succeeded in getting the testing approved (the trans-esophageal echocardiogram) that the doctor wants to do during the catheterization, but they have not yet gotten the catheterization procedure approved. They are working on it.