Another year, another broken bone!  This is number 8 in 6 years. Each time Janie has been laid up, she has lost a little bit of her mobility. I thought it was just because she couldn’t be active, but it turns out she has another problem called Ataxia. Basically this is a neurological condition that affects coordination and balance. It probably explains many of the falls she’s had over the years, but it was only recently diagnosed. We still don’t know the cause and we don’t know the prognosis. In the past 6 months, her ability to walk has diminished considerably.  She also sprained her knee a couple of months ago, and has not been able to get around by herself at all since then.

Once she had the diagnosis, she decided to restart physical therapy. Previous PT had been specific to rehab the various fractures that she’d had, but this phyiscal therapy is more generalized to address the coordination as well as recovery from the knee sprain and strengthening from the years of inactivity. She was improving, too! She was beginning to do some walking with a walker and working toward less dependence on the wheelchair, although she didn’t go very far. 

Unfortunately, while using the walker at home, she lost her balance and fell. We had allowed a lapse in safety precautions, so that the wheelchair and the walker were between me and her. (I should have been behind her.) When she fell backwards, she caught herself with her wrist and actually bent the titanium plate that was there from her first surgery in 2012.

The good news, if there is any, is that the plate probably prevented a more serious fracture like the one she had in 2016. She had surgery on June 15 and she is doing well, although still in some pain. She is determined to restart physical therapy and will probably do so next week.

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