It's the Little Things

Wow, what a gorgeous weekend! I hope everyone got out for a little while and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Judi and I spent some quality time outside both days. She is over the "crud" and feeling great. On Saturday, we did some shopping and then had some lunch outside and just enjoyed the atmosphere. On Sunday, we spent the morning just sitting outside hanging out with each other and listening to some of our favorite tunes. I talked to her a lot and she seemed to soak all of it in. It is awfully good medicine for me to hear her laugh and see her clearly enjoy herself. The new room is working great for her and she enjoys letting the sun shine in. I think it greatly reduces the "cabin fever" for both of us.


Judi continues to show significant progress physically. She is steadily regaining control of her left leg, but there is still a very long way to go. We had her evaluated for BOTOX injections in her left hand and arm last week to relieve the contractions she has experienced there. The results indicated these are very good candidates and that she should get some significant relief. I am still very concerned about where we are on this arm, but we will continue to pursue all available options to restore it to maximum functionality. Neck strength continues to improve as well. She now has her very own recliner and is enjoying it a great deal. I was able to find her one that fits her almost perfectly and I think it is already aiding in maintaining a better posture for her. We are also changing her wheel chair to a different model that will aid in her back and head positioning. The new chair will also position her legs differently which we hope will minimize her desire to push against the foot plates. We are continuing to experiment with medications and massages to give her some relief from the muscle spasms in her legs. We are having some success and hopefully we can whip this thing soon.

Speech continues to be a focus area. Not much new to share here, but we still believe it is just a matter of time. I continue to spend the majority of our free time during the evening in this area. She is very vocal, but still unable to get everything to line up. If there is anything Judi will fight to recover, it will be her ability to talk!

Mentally her recovery continues at a slow pace, but she is clearly getting better. She is doing fine on the new anti-seizure medication. We will have to keep a close eye on her blood chemistry since this medication has some potential side effects in this area, but so far so good. I am also trying to expose her to more visitors now that she has reached a point where she understands and hopefully recognizes them. The goal being to stimulate her brain activity and cause her to keep trying to put all of the pieces together. I am unsure whether it will help, but I am sure it will not hurt. What I have discovered about brain injuries is that it is very much a trial and error process to see what works. What works for one person, may be totally ineffective for another. Just let me know if you would like to come and visit.

On a different note, I had someone innocently tell me last week how sorry they were that Judi and I were having to go through this and how sad they were that our lives had been ruined. I could write an epistle around both of these comments, but I'll keep it to a few lines since most of you already know how I feel about this. I obviously wish this had never happened, but it did. I wish it had been me instead of Judi, but it wasn't. Our lives have certainly been changed forever, but they have not been ruined. We will move forward and find new things to share together and grow stronger as a result of it. As the title of this post says, it's the little things that are important. I continue to take refuge in the belief that God has a purpose here and that we will be enriched in the long run. I will admit that this is the only thing that keeps me moving on some of the more difficult days. I will also admit that each day of late seems to test my faith and resolve. I only mention it so that each of you will know how important your prayers are to us.

Thank you all again,

Steve

Slow and Steady

Our girl continues to fight the good fight and I continue to do my best to knock the obstacles out of her way. She has made significant physical recovery over the last few weeks and shows continuous; albeit slow, mental gains as well.

Judi continues to grow stronger physically on all fronts.

She is beginning to recover significant strength in her neck and holds her head up for longer and longer periods of time. I know she is tired of hearing me tell her to hold her head up and I am afraid I am going to rub off her eyebrows with the constant "help" in holding up her head. I know that she understands that I am only trying to help, but she still puts the "stink eye" on me at times when she just wants to be left alone. I am confident we will win this battle, but it is going to be a long process.

Her left side continues to grow stronger at a fairly significant pace. She is regaining control of the motion in her left leg and when standing is very comfortable carrying weight on it as well. The more weight bearing activities we can do with her, the more control the brain recovers of the leg. I think all of us are becoming more and more confident that she will be able to walk again based on the response we see. Her left arm is going to require a lot of work, but she is starting to regain control of it as well. The issue here is the significant loss of muscle that has occurred during the time since her accident. We remain positive here as well, but there are sure to be some challenges in front of us.

We are trying to restore her back strength as well. I believe this is going to be our major physical challenge once we get the neck restored. One of the things we are doing to restore her normal posture is to get her out of the wheelchair as much as possible. This also has a lot of psychological impacts as well. She has taken ownership of my recliner and we try to get her in it anytime we can. She spends several hours each day sitting in it as opposed to sitting in a wheelchair and it is clearly making a difference. I came home the other day and she looked like the "Queen of Sheba" sitting there in my chair. When I gave her a hug and kiss she wrapped her hand around my head and gave me a big hug back. I'll admit that tears of joy have been few and far between of late, but I can't describe how impactive these seemingly simple things are on my ability to keep on going.

Speech therapy continues to show slow results. Judi has all the physical pieces, but is still struggling to execute everything in the proper sequence to clearly form words. We are focusing a lot of our effort in this area. We continue to believe it will just time and there is nothing that indicates she won't ultimately succeed.

Her awareness level continues to improve. She enjoys watching TV (especially America's Funniest Home Videos) and looking at magazines while you read to her. I can't tell if she is trying to read it as well. We will continue to try and have her write and respond to words that we write down. It is difficult to tell if she understands or not, but we continue to expose her to it. Writing still eludes her, but I can't tell if it is an eye/hand coordination issue, mental limitation or a combination of the two. Her yes/no responses are improving. She has periods where she will actively participate and is usually 100% then. These are still very limited windows and the majority of the time she just won't commit one way or the other. We continue to work with her and reinforce that there are no wrong answers. This is still a very significant improvement from where she was just a month ago and indicates that she has the ability.

The leg continues to cause both of us a great deal of issues. I have figured out how to minimize the duration of the attacks and she is fighting hard to control them as well. We are exploring several treatment strategies. As always, the complicating factor is not implementing a strategy that impacts the brain stimulation we are trying so hard to promote. More to follow as our direction becomes clear.

As I mentioned in the last post, we started Judi on an anti-seizure medication to see if it would improve her mental status. The first medication kicked her butt and I had to take her off of it. We have subsequently started her on a different medication and she seems to be tolerating it well. We will have to monitor her response once the medicine level builds up to the appropriate levels in her system. The EEG results were abnormal in some areas on the right side of her brain (which we expected) and showed nothing abnormal on the left side. EEGs are "hit and miss" as far as seizure activity goes. None was detected while she was being monitored, but that is only a 30 minute snapshot. At least now we have a baseline to monitor her against.

My biggest problem right now is that Judi has caught the "crud" that is going around. She was spiking a pretty high fever for a couple of days, but that seems to be under control. Now we are dealing with the congestion, cough and (I suspect) sore throat. These would typically be relatively easy to manage, but in her condition each presents a challenge of its own.

Please keep us in your prayers as we take on these new challenges. Judi loves to have visitors and if anyone would like to drop by we would be tickled to have you. She has a busy schedule, but we can always work around it. Just drop me an e-mail (swilk@knology.net) or give us a call (706) 855-6940 if you would like to see her.

Steve