The Kleinlein Family

Wednesday was our first day at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital (the building behind us). We had another trip back to MGH before therapy began as they need to re-run all the mapping testing as the tumor is now a different shape. So after a morning of IVs, contrasts, head masks and CT simulations we are now ready for a relaxing afternoon of physical, occupational and speech evaluations.

When we check into rehab, Meghan seems a little depressed. Initially she thought she was being discharged to the Ronald McDonald House (it's not home, but it is a good substitute). The rehab hospital, was exactly like a hospital....pretty sterile. So I tried to cheer her up by looking out the window and saying "Hey Megs, you have a great view, if the Bruins are playing the lights are blue and if the Celtics are playing the lights are green." She was slightly sarcastic in her response, "Yep, it's nice Mom, the view from my window is a Beer Ad!"

One of the main benefits of being in a rehab hospital is that they have all the props needed for success. Meghan can't move her left hand--gravity wins each time. So they strapped her hand to this little "car" and suddenly the muscles in her left hand are firing as they put the "car" sideways and back and forth. Getting the muscles to fire on their own, is the beginning.

Speech and Language gave us some good news too. The first test that they did with Megs was a cognitive processing test to see how much information she has retained from before the seizure. The pathologist, Becky, says a word and Meghan had to point to the picture that correlates to the word. Towards the end of the test, the words were getting really tough (Stephan and I didn't know some of them). Becky told us that Meghan scored the highest possible--she has the vocabulary recall of an 18 year old. It's a lot easier to retrain muscles as opposed to try and open cognitive pathways.

We are not really happy to be in a wheelchair (and I do mean "we"). Little Italy is a mile down the road but Meghan can't leave the hospital grounds until she can walk without assistance. Instead of seeing brick stone streets, Italian restaurants, gelato stands, and Italian bakeries, we came to see the geese on the grounds. So she said "Why I am looking at stupid geese?" We laughed because this comment was so out of character for Meghan, then she added, "Stupid geese bit Mallory". Even geese play a role in motivating Meghan to get stronger so she can have some freedom to expore Boston.