Results of PT/OT evaluations for rehab and plan

I just got a call from the discharge planner. Well, the evaluations were done by PT and OT and they've recommended Sara for Vallejo only for family care training and then discharge to home. Again, they don't see her potential for recovery. It just makes me cave in inside. But, hell, we see it, Sara knows it, she just needs time. Time she has and at least at home she'll have safety, love and her family and friends there to surround her.

So, I have a meeting next Monday with the discharge group to plan the transition. Before I go i'll need the names of anyone else that would like to be trained as a family/emergency caregiver. We will supplement the nurses that will be paid by MediCAL. (btw - lobby your representatives NOT to cut MediCAL benefits! Kaiser does not pay for home care at all.) Family/emergency caregivers will have keys to my house and are welcome and encouraged to stop in anytime and check on her with the nurses. I will have to be working from home when she first comes home (and as much as they'll let me afterward), to oversee her nursing.

Also, it looks like its time to get her room ready. I'm going to throw this out there to her friends. She wants me to paint her room, and wants me to invite her friends to decorate it with her stuff for her. I'll take care of the painting and getting the shelves up. Daniel, if you could ask the Circle of Friends to decorate and manage that, it would be great.

I'll get her shower system ordered. Her Grandpa George sent some money for me to get something special for Sara. She LOVES showers and actually being clean. It is one of the biggest things she is looking forward to when she gets home - a real shower - actually feeling clean. I think that she'd enjoy that daily, and he'd enjoy knowing he made her day a little better each day.

Her friends from Tower of Time and Deviant Art have been sending in whatever they could for donations. What a great group of friends. I know she has really missed her online art community. I am setting aside their donations to see if there is some way we could get her drawing again (some interface or program that would allow her to do it somehow).

I am not sure what the status will be about her communication computer. Kaiser is renting it and somedays it works, some days it doesn't. It has the capability to allow her to quickly communicate (people dismiss her if it takes too long), go on the internet and browse, chat and even make phone calls. Problem is that without training (or it working steadily) it does none of that. I jumped up and down to the company and speech therapist until somebody committed to coming to fix it and see if a different sensor may be in order.

Oh, man...and I need to get the ramp designed and built. That won't be hard, actually. Luckily I'm pretty fair at swinging a hammer, but I may ask a contractor friend of mine to do it. Just thinking about all of this makes me want to crawl under my desk and take a nap.

Even as disappointed (and scared) I am that she's not going to Vallejo, I AM looking forward to having her home. Its been six months without her. I know we will all be happier once she's there. And then I can turn off the porch light...

(Porch Light - I have always left the porch light on if someone who lives here is not home - even when she would stay at daniels for the night - just something about the porch light always being on, ready for you to come home safe... So, it stays on, night and day, waiting for her to come home safe...)