Recovery Success Story: Willie
May 5th, 2024Willie was admitted to McNaughten Pointe in February of 2023 with acute on chronic respiratory failure, pleural effusion, and End Stage Renal Disease on Hemodialysis 3x/week. Over the course of several months, he was successfully weaned from the vent and the trach was removed successfully. However, he was largely bedfast, inactive and remained on 4L/min NC 02 at all times.
Willie had a short course of PT during which he began transfer training from bed to wheelchair daily. When that course of PT ended, he was given a HEP that included activity recommendations to continue out of bed activities and sitting tolerance in wheelchair for increasing amounts of time. He built up his tolerance to 4 hours per episode of sitting in wheelchair. PT reassessed him on 3/18/2024 for gait training and began a new course of PT focused on standing balance and gait training with Front Wheeled Walker.
Although he was severely posterior leaning and demonstrated poor device management initially, he showed great progress to eventually transfer bed wheelchair ad lib independently.
He eventually weaned off of the NC 02 completely to room air and has been able to walk 120 feet with FWW and Contact Guard Assist with significantly improved balance, safety and activity tolerance. Just today, he said "Guess what! I was able to stand and walk onto the scale to get weighed for dialysis, instead of sitting.
I haven't been able to do that before!" He has been so thankful for therapy working with him and helping him regain his life out of the bed, transferring by himself, and building up his walking tolerance and safety. We are all so proud of him and appreciate his tremendous attitude and engagement with therapy services.