Going Home

Walter is home. He travelled by ambulance this past Wednesday. The next chapter of his recovery now begins and the transition, not unexpectedly, has had its bumps. His bed was not ready when he arrived at the townhouse, and the technician had a difficult time putting it together. Walter, as you might expect, was much fatigued by this point. We finally just helped him stretch out on the sofa, and he slept pretty well for a while. The bed was finally ready for him to go to sleep that night.

We are structuring a schedule for the various caretakers. Working out the bugs in that will likely take a little while. Brenda, Jessica's mother, is staying with Jessica and Walter this week. Huge help and blessing!

Walter's recovery continues, although incrementally. His speech is further improving. He moves his left leg some, which is encouraging. He eats well. His right side is strong. Today, he starts rehab at Pathways, an outpatient rehab facility affiliated with The Shepherd Center. Shepherd Center has not cleared Walter for travel by personal auto, so Jessica has been working to arrange third-party transportation. It is not cheap. We are finding out that nothing is. He is scheduled for three days of rehab per week; not sure for how long—driven by insurance coverages.

We increasingly realize the magnitude of the costs of Walter's care not covered by insurance, and we are grateful to those who have expressed an interest in helping financially. To facilitate both the giving and management of funds that anyone desires to contribute, an account has been established at Citizens National Bank of Quitman. The account will be utilized solely and directly to defray Walter's medical and rehab costs. Although we are only now learning what those costs may include, we anticipate that the funds will be used for things like transportation to and from rehab, qualified caretaking professionals (e.g., medical technicians), etc. Anyone desiring to help defray some of these costs may send contributions to the following address:

    Benjamin Walter Romine Medical Fund

    c/o Citizens National Bank of Quitman

    PO Box 270

    Quitman, GA 31643

 

Contributors will, upon request, receive periodic reports of the expenses paid.

 

Walter's dad is also planning a benefit golf tournament at Kinderlou Golf Club in Valdosta, Georgia. The format will probably be a 4-man scramble, the field will be flighted based on some type of team aggregate handicapping system and prizes will be awarded to at least the 1st and 2^nd lowest team scores in each flight. Team entry fees and other details will be determined within the next week or so and posted on this blog. The date, hopefully within the next 4 to 6 weeks, will shortly be set as well.

 

Anyone interested in getting together a foursome for the tournament, or perhaps otherwise participating in some way, please send your email address to john@taylorlegal.net . We will distribute all of the information as soon as it is available.

 

 

 

Been a while since last update. Apologies for that. I'll do my best to catch up.

Dad took some notes during his day with Walter back on June 5. Some highlights from that day:

    -    Walter tires at the end of the day from his therapies and the muscle relaxant that the doctors currently have him on.

    -    The assistant to the three doctors was effusive with her praise of Walter's progress since he arrived at Shepherd. His movement is so much better, and he is much more alert. He played a form of racquetball in therapy and handed out "high fives" when         he made a good shot. The assistant ended by saying that in reality things move very slowly, but through the eyes of those who see the patients when they are first admitted, his progress is "remarkable—I'm impressed."

    -    At around 5 PM Walter was content to watch a college baseball game.

Things have continued to improve steadily since then. Walter is increasingly eating solid food. On a diet scale of 1 to 5, he is at "2". As he eats more food, the doctors cut back on his artificial nourishment. He's also saying more and more words and is trying to ask more and more questions. He's become aware enough to start wondering about longer term issues, like whether or not he'll be able to play golf again. Those discussions have been tough, trying to balance encouragement with honesty about future unknowns. He continues to work on moving between bed and chair. Jessica, Mom and Dad have been in family training this week to learn things like how to help him move back and forth. Pray, please, for strength of all sorts, including physical. Helping Walter move around is not easy.

He is scheduled to go home on June 17. Again, we're not certain of what that will look like, as far as schedules and living arrangements. We do know that Walter will continue therapy on an outpatient basis. Jessica is working on all the various logistics. I'll fill in details as we go.

A recent experience with Walter illustrates to some extent the communication frustrations we are all experiencing right now. Lyn and I spent about three hours with him this past Saturday evening, from about 6 to 9. We watched Blue Collar Comedy tour on the Comedy Channel for a while, and Walter visibly chuckled at a few lines. As we got closer to 8:30 and 9:00 (remember that visiting hours end at 9), he appeared to get sleepy, so we tried to help him get comfortable and go to sleep, but instead he became increasingly agitated. He motioned with his right hand toward the ceiling several times to communicate something but finally gave up. A few minutes later, Lyn guessed "You want the lights out?" to which he responded with an enthusiastic thumbs up. So far so good. He raised his hand up toward a clock on the wall opposite his bed and clenched his fist; we decided he was just stretching. He repeatedly pointed toward the door, so I closed it, assuming that he wanted it shut to keep out the light from the hall: all this making sense from someone who obviously wanted to sleep. But then he only got more agitated, pulling on his t-shirt, taking the cover off and on, etc. The more we tried to help him get comfortable the worse it got. Finally, Lyn called the attendant to ask for help. He shortly arrived and told us that, as was the routine, he would get Walter ready for bed as soon as we left. At this Walter whipped around to shake my hand to let me know it was time to go. He'd been trying for 30 or 45 minutes to tell us it was time for us to go so he could get ready to go to sleep. He had raised a fist to the clock to say "times up". He had repeatedly pointed to the door, not to get us to shut it, but to get us to leave out of it. Next time we'll know.

 

 

The medical professionals at Emory told us that Walter's improvement would become much more noticeable once he got to rehab. That has indeed been the case. In fact, his progress over the past week or so has been such that Shepherd has decided to extend his stay for two weeks, to mid-June. A brief synopsis of the past week:

Walter daily has become more aware of his surroundings. He is trying to sit up on his own and can pull himself up. The staff is working with him to learn how to transfer back and forth between bed and wheelchair, and they say he is doing well with that. He is saying more and more words: "yes", "no", "I love you", "lay down", for example. Watching ESPN, he asked Jessica to turn "vooloom uuuup", which means "volume up". Jessica said that she never thought she could get so excited over ESPN.

He does not like any restraint. Shepherd has had casts on his legs and feet for a while now, stretching out his Achilles tendon preparing him to stand. Those are to come off today. The therapists plan to put one on his left arm to start working to straighten it out. He has occasionally removed the straps off his wheelchair and almost fallen out. He has removed his catheter a few times, raising the ire of one of the more, let us say, authoritative nurses, one that knows how to get his attention.

Walter increasingly recognizes people when they enter the room. When Jessica came in the other night, the door barely creaked but he immediately opened his eyes and looked over at her. He recognized her, put his arm out and wanted a hug. I visited this past Sunday, and he, without any direction or encouragement, reached out and shook my hand. He is more and more engaged. His eyes still continue to struggle somewhat with focusing and tracking, though, but that is improving.

Yesterday was a red letter day. He ate chocolate pudding and wanted more! I cannot imagine what that must have tasted like after tasting nothing for six weeks. The doctors plan a swallow test later this week. Hopefully Walter will move increasingly toward eating and drinking instead of being fed everything through the peg to his stomach.

Also yesterday, the Shepherd patients received visits from the Falcons rookie team and cheerleaders. Walter, Dad and Mom met several: John Parker Wilson, Garrett Reynolds, Peria Jerry, Vance Walker, Rashad Bobino, William Moore. Dad was extremely impressed with their friendliness. Several of them took a special interest in Walter, due in part to his flawless execution of certain "ethnic handshakes", I'll call them. Dad tells me that the African-American players were extremely impressed. Dad set one or two of them up by asking them to come over and shake Walter's hand and telling them to go slow with him due to his condition. Dad loved watching the surprise on their faces when Walter moved through the progressions with such ease.

We recognize progress because we are starting to think about "what next", in terms of living arrangements, etc. Please pray for guidance, wisdom and patience as we work through that. And, as always, please continue to pray for Walter's continuing healing, with thanks for the journey to this point.