A quick note about the lack of updates: my dad has been in Korea for the last 2 weeks and their twice a week visits to Chris during the weekdays are down to zero because my mom can not drive… unfortunately my dad is not back until early next year so my mom has been doing everything by herself lately (dropping off and picking up Gabriel, and off course taking care of everything else). It is amazing how disruptive it is not to have one of my parents, my dad used to drive me to yoga every morning and without my early morning yoga class, I started to have insomnia again – reason why I am up at 2:30 AM. Urgh…

Have I ever mentioned this? About a year ago I was prescribed so many drugs (basically anti-depressants, mild anxiety pills and sleeping pills). I could not fall asleep even with sleeping pills. One day, cold turkey, I stopped all medications, and started to do yoga – almost daily. I started to sleep like a baby at nights; my body got so strong, it cleared by mind, yoga kept my physical and mental health… Anyway, point being I have not done yoga since my dad left and I think I am having trouble sleeping again because of the lack of yoga practice…

Anyway, given that I can not sleep, here I am in the computer. I got the written report from the assessment conducted at the Bobath Centre and will try to summarize it here despite some very technical terms they use in the report.

It is a 5-page long report and it wastes exactly two pages with “History of Presenting Condition” and “Current Physical Status” because I know all this stuff, it’s basically a history of his health condition since the cardiac arrest and his current problems. Then it moves to (I have summarized it as best as I could):

Family’s concerns: to explore the potential for future recovery, with advice regarding ongoing PT management and treatment.

Consultation aims: musculoskeletal and neurological changes were explored to assess their impact upon Mr. Barnes’ potential and ability to regain postural control and balance in sitting.

Consultation assessment: very technical terms which I could not really understand (i.e. bilateral hamstring shortening resulting in a posterior tilt of the pelvis, or, in sitting there is a marked flexor patterning of his upper limbs with the left arms more involved than the right and the arms are held in flexion, adduction with internal rotation, however, the right glenohumeral joint level tends to be more anteriorly placed in relation to the left due to pectoral muscle shortening. And on like this, it does not sound any good.

Consultation evaluation: the potential for improving pelvic, trunk and shoulder girdle alignment was explored through gaining Mr. Barnes’ active adaptation to movement. As normal movement uses automatic postural adjustments prior to any volitional movement activation, we were trying to recruit on an automatic level the basis for postural control even though Mr. Barnes can not utilize volitional movement at the present time.

Recommendations: … consultation showed that there was a potential to change his current sitting alignment and utilize this as a better basis for any future recovery… a period of intensive therapy specifically aimed at addressing the above musculoskeletal areas and facilitating more automatic postural control may allow for improved sitting balance and posture.

“We would recommend that in order to further assess this potential for change an intensive two week block of therapy with two experienced PT’s would be benefitical to Mr. Barnes as he requires specific handling in order to optimize any functional gains”.

So that is the summary outcome of the assessment conducted at the world famous Bobath Centre. In practical terms it means I need to come up with US$2,160 for the two week treatment course plus the daily transport (I just got charged for that at c. US$180 when Chris went to the assessment session, which means it would be a total of close to US$4,000 including the transportation). As everyone knows, Chris actually has close to US$50,000 of money donated from over 1000 people to his therapies which is currently under the control of his father who thinks he (instead of Chris) should be the main beneficiary of the money as thoroughly explained here. This money belongs to Chris (as clearly promised in the fundraising process) and if this was under my control, I could be perhaps pursuing this, as well as booking his next trip to China. Instead, I can assure that not a single penny has so far been directed to Chris. This makes me sick in my stomach. How ludicrous can a situation get?

Anyway, past 3 AM so I will try to get some sleep. Good night.