Still trying to get S walking

We have had a second visit from the private neuro physio. She noticed some improvements in S's movement and balance. The main problem is still that the bent knees aspect of the 'Parkinson's gait' stops S from standing up properly and this is not helped by her understandable lack of confidence after so long off her feet. This is something that might be helped by increasing the dosage of the Sinemet (Parkinson's med), When S first took it about a year ago, the improvement in the gait was noticeable. I have spent a lot of time chasing the Parkinson's clinic for a home visit to assess and prescribe. They do do home visits, it turns out, but it might be a long wait.

In the meantime, the physio was all in favour of us getting S out and about once we are downstairs and have a wheelchair, and she is confident that S has the strength to allow her to be moved from the wheelchair to a car seat. She mentioned a transfer board. If this proves possible it will open up new horizons for us even without S being able to walk. She had some helpful suggestions about ways to make transfers more efficient and safer. When she had gone, K and I transferred S from chair to bed using the suggested technique and S actually took a couple of steps during the process. She was fully supported by us but still this is more than we've seen for quite a while.

We've agreed that she won't come again at least until we have the wheelchair, in 3-4 weeks. I do feel that she is reluctant to try too much for fear of injuring S and is also very reluctant to do things that cause S to be agitated. But the agitation she is seeing is very minor from our perspective. She repeated something that she has said before which is that we may find that with increasingly regular activity S may just start to to walk. I'm sceptical as S was needing a lot of support to get started even before the 'event'. But I do feel that if we are a little more active in supporting her she may eventually overcome her fear of being on her feet, which is currently a major factor.

So there is still some hope.