royai:

occupational therapist (rehab therapist) coming in to be annoying and say that alphonse’s full recovery probably didn’t happen until well into a year post-promised day. he likely needed hours on hours of physical and occupational therapy and even some swallow/slp too. when you lose that much muscle mass you are unable to walk, eat without aspiration, carry/hold items, do much of anything without feeling extremely short of breath. he probably had some neuropathy too as his body went years without any tactile input. i bet he experienced allodynia (sensation of pain from a stimulus that is usually non-painful), parathesias, and other odd neuropathies. he probably had extreme range of motion limitations, including a contracture or two in his upper extremities, meaning doctors or therapists (probably occupational therapists) would order night splints. now this is me applying modern day med to the early 1900s (when occupational therapy wasn’t even solidified as a profession until 1917) but my general point remains: al had a lot of boo boos that would have realistically taken at least a year to heal completely

Do you think the rockbells could have helped them? they do have experience with physical therapy, granted its for automail. That being said, they are very very learned in the science of anatomy to be able to make machinery compatible with the human nervous system. Im not saying this would make it any faster, im just suggesting that they could have been the ones heading it.