Building Connections

If every day was like today, wouldn't life be wonderful? Cloudless, cool morning. Hot Starbucks blonde coffee with cream for breakfast, ice water before lunch. Everyone's appointments and work projects and therapies going as scheduled, smooth as silk. Very happy to have today here with Mom.

Mom's therapy yesterday was thorough and exhausting, exactly as it should be. We are all very happy with the program here so far, speech and occupational therapy are good, and physical therapy is fantastic. Michael, the therapist here, is a slight person, but boy he sure knows how to instill confidence in Mom, and he's strong as a horse! Again, I have to say it's a great thing to find people in professions that they absolutely belong in. Those dedicated to caring for people, and helping them get better, when their heart is in it, you can absolutely tell. It shows through in their every movement, and it's reflected on the faces and in the spirits of their patients.

This morning, as Mom has already completed speech and physical therapy, and is awaiting her lunch, she's working on a word-search book. There are probably 40 words to find, and in 10 minutes she's already found 2. That's as many as someone without a crainiotomy would find. She's having no trouble reading the large print in the book, picked out a pretty 'chestnut' colored crayon (and pronounced the color right!) and has circled the words she's found, and crossed them off the list with zero trouble. How amazing is that? The therapist at Reliant said it might be hard to find a single word, and if after a while trying, you need to take a break, do that. So I think Mom is a superstar for being successful with 2 words already!

Special thanks to Mom's friends at school this week. Brandi had brought by a big basket FULL to the brim of cards and gifts a while back. Every day we're bring a handful of cards to Mom so that she can enjoy them. It's a special treat after a long day of working to read poems and silly pictures, and especially the names of her friends. (It's especially helpful for us when there are first and last names on the cards, hint hint!)

One especially funny card was of 2 Easter bunnies talking to each other. It was meant to be a silly card, but it served many purposes...

1. Mom got to read large printed words, and had no trouble.

2. Mom remembered her wonderful friend who sent it, and told us all about her.

3. Mom laughed at the funny bunnies, very cute drawings!

4. We asked mom the inferred questions, why are the bunnies saying what they are saying? She studied the picture and knew exactly why. One didn't have a butt and one didn't have any ears.

This is a very similar exercise to what her speech therapist has her do every day. Questions, pictures, things we all look at naturally and just automatically understand, Mom can visualize but the meaning doesn't always come out of her mouth correctly. But it's getting better, and the bunny card was so fun, because it was made by a friend, and it was exactly what she needed!

Thank you to all friends and family who are faithfully sending cards, pictures, blog posts, facebook messages, etc. Mom is too tired every day to receive visitors, but these little things she can read, have read to her, or can hold in her hand mean so much, and they connect her to you, and they help her build new connections in her brain as she recovers.

Sweet Treats

Easter 2012

Easter weekend - what a nice several days together! This was surely an Easter like no other we've had before, typically Mom cooks for 2-3 days ahead, has a long shopping list and menu written out on the kitchen counter, held in place by the plate rack and with a pen handy for last minute additions. Probably under the list there's a magazine picture and new recipe that she's including, just trying something different. Her house is always decorated with eggs and bunnies everywhere, beautiful little Easter decorations she has collected over the years, very familiar to all of us.

This Easter was a little different...she's looked through the magazines, she told us to get dinner catered so we didn't have to worry about it, but do go get some things for the girls, and please buy the girls new dresses and shoes.

Shopping for the girls was easy, not as much fun without her there for her spot-on opinion of what looks good, but the girls had new dresses and they looked so pretty. But cater Easter dinner? That's not in our vocabulary, easy as it would have been.

Jennifer and I split up the essentials of the meal and between the 2 of us had the ham, cherries (mom's favorite), scalloped potatoes, green bean casserole, crescent rolls, and cake. Not the traditional Italian creme cake that Mom's made for decades, but a Facebook-inspired Boston cream pie decorated by Mary Claire with a ring of Peeps on the outside. They stuck well to the chocolate, made cutting very easy. It was a pretty and fun ending to a simple but filling meal. Filling to the tummy as well as the spirit.

MC and the famous Peeps Pie

The Easter Bunny visited Dad with his favorite coconut, dark chocolate egg. Mom took a little bite, sensitive to the sweetness and her blood sugar levels (made high by the steroids she is on). Mom loved the egg, so did Dad. Mom said, "That thing must have 50 million calories!" but Dad checked and said it only had 120. Mom's reply? "We'll let's get another one, then!"

The girls enjoyed breaking the rules of no pictures on the walls of this hospital by decorating Mom's windows with the little plastic window decorations of Easter bunnies, the kind you get for $1.00 on sale at Walgreens. The brightness of the flowers and carrots and little bunnies brings cheer to the windows, and today looking out on the foggy morning, it brings continued smiles to the room. (and no one has told us to take them down yet, so up they stay!)

This Easter Monday, Mom has enjoyed Facebook posts, is reading a Southern Living magazine, and offered many thanks to the chef that just came in to take menu orders for tomorrow. As he was here, I found out yesterday that at 5am, Mom was craving a biscuit. She hadn't ordered it for breakfast...what to do...where to get a biscuit in a hospital with pre-ordered meals? Thankful for kind and resourceful nurses again, when Dad told the nurse of Mom's craving, she 'found' a biscuit and brought it right up! Many thanks to that chef and his delicious recipes every day, and especially for the biscuit that brought happiness to Mom yesterday!