Did you know I talk in sparkles?

Mom sparkles. She may as well use glitter shampoo, that's how much she shines here. Every nurse that comes in has a kind smile for Mom, and Alicia (the nurse, not the daughter) took particular care and attention with her this morning. She had a wonderful shower and shampoo, and then styled her hair carefully so that the side that has gotten very thin and sparse is covered nicely. We put in 2 colorful clips, and with the purple tshirt she's wearing today, Mom is as pretty as an Easter Egg this morning.

After 2 classes of 1-1 therapy, Mom had her group session right before lunch. In a crowd of probably 20 patients, Mom had a good class of stretches, hand weights, and leg lifts. The therapists are full of energy and spunk, and song! The final exercise, a march, started off with a military-type chant, "Left, left, left right left, left, left, left right left..." and ended with a rousing rendition of She's a Grand Old Flag.

After classes this morning, Mom had lunch and then speech therapy. With sweet Nikole, her therapist, we learned why it's important to work on memorizing words. Say, rose, pillow and heart, those are today's words and their corresponding clues.

1. Nikole point out that a rose is in Mom's room, it's pink, it smells good, it's beautiful, she is going to carry yellow roses in her upcoming wedding.
2. The pillow is small, pink, pretty, and Mom has 2 of them. Nikole has 5 of them.
3. The heart is a shape, it's on mom's quilt, it beats, it's the shape of a valentine.

The idea of these words are to say them now, then go to another topic of discussion, then recall those words 2, 5, and 10 minutes later. This is a lot harder than it sounds. Mom's responses, before saying the word, centralize on Nikole's upcoming wedding (which will definitely includes roses and hearts and a change of pillows!) and really "beat around the bush" instead of going to the target word. Fascinating how she completely understands what the word is but has trouble getting the single word out.

The reason this word-recall game is important, is that mom will be working on recalling more important things more easily, and practice on not-important words will make the important ones come more smoothly. So maybe we will all not be called "Granddaddy" one day. We all know he's her favorite person in the universe. If there was any doubt, just listen to her talk, everything she needs, jokes about, mentioned casually, struggles with...it's all about "Granddaddy." She does say all of our names now, but when our name doesn't come out right, we become "Granddaddy". :)

While Mom concentrates on her words, she frequently says "it's sparkles" or "I'm just talking sparkles" which probably is an accurate description of what's going on with her neurons and synapses, they are sparkling and trying to connect. Maybe one day we'll have a whole little firework-fest and all the right words will come out at the right time.

For now, one sparkle at a time, it's been a fun day.