Friday September 16, 2005

Friday September 16, 2005 Zack had breakfast and was waiting for me in bed. He got up, showered, dressed and we go for a walk. He wanted to buy a trophy so we went to the gift shop. It was closed. I asked him what the trophy was for and he said to look at. I asked him if it would say World’s Greatest Mom and he said, “you’re not that hot”. On the way back up to the room he rapped the 23 Psalm for the lady that brings meals.
Speech with Kathy and Katie a cute student at U of L. Zack was all smiles and a little silly. He is still a little mixed up but making strides in reading. A break through is right around the corner. He is stuck on the word “contract” today and uses it a lot. Kathy hid 2 objects to see if he could remember where she put them. He found one right away and the other he was in the general area but found it after a while. When it was time to leave Katie followed Kathy out the door. Zack liked her and said, “I wish she could have followed us”. P.T. with Amy and Zack was on the bike for 15 minutes. Then it was time for Amy to torture him with stretches. He complained, “It hurts” and asked, “How long does it last”. O.T. with Mary Beth and they talked about how good Zack did with math yesterday. Today he wrote the date, his name in cursive and remembered how to make a cursive “Z”. He wrote a sentence about Pat Day, “Pat Day is a Lola Jockey” (I wonder if Pat ever rode a horse named Lola). They worked on telling time with a big cardboard clock, she gave him many different times and he did it easily and so well. He was very proud of himself. Then they moved to seek-n-find word puzzles. Very hard. He scanned each row for the words but he could find them. The good thing was he did not get frustrated. Then Mary Beth would point out the general area and he would find the word. He found several on his own. Mary Beth said that simple seek-n-find would be great for him to work on in the room. Afternoon speech and Kathy the played a memory game Guess Who with him. There were 323 characters and she picked one for him to use clues and guess whom she picked. He did very well. Speech wore him out so he went back to his room to rest. Lunch came and he ate and wanted to go to the courtyard to look for his people. I kept telling him his friends were in school but he insisted that they were waiting for him outside. He went to the courtyard to look for them and seemed agitated when he couldn’t find them. He asked me if I liked it here and I explained that I didn’t mind being here because this place was helping him. Afternoon P.T. and they went to the Frazier grocery store. She asked him to get 4 potatoes, 5 oranges, 3 onions, 1 corn and 1 pepper. He had trouble identifying most of the vegetables. She showed them to him and then hid them all over the store. She sat him down and asked him some generic questions and then had him go look for the vegetables. He found the first 6 right away, had a little trouble with some of the others but eventually found them all. He only seemed to get frustrated when the aphasia set in and he couldn’t communicate his thoughts. We really need prayers in that area. O.T. and he hits a balloon back and forth for a long time. They work on strengthening his right arm by lifting weights. It was very hard but he did it without complaining. Mary Beth wants us to work on his hand in the room with the resistance device she sent with us. He took a nap after O.T. and then we take a walk until dinner. He seems sad but when I ask him what’s wrong he says nothing. He decides to go back to his room and take a shower, put on clean clothes and some cologne in anticipation of female visitors tonight. During dinner Scott calls and Zack says to tell his Dad he wants to return to his residence. “There’s not enough room here”. He climbs in bed and I find something that interests him on T.V. He calls me over and says, “I want to leave here and not come back. That’s how it sucks for me”. I convince him to get up and take a walk. We leave a note on the door in case his friends come by and head outside. We walk for a long time around the Jewish Hospital campus. Played checkers and cards. No visitors tonight (first time) so we took a lot of walks. Zack got antsy so we went to the cafeteria and bought ice cream. He climbed in bed and watched T.V. He’s waiting for his Dad to get here and they will find something interesting to do. Now I’m getting anxious to take him home. It will be so good to walk around our block again, go to BW3 to eat and play the trivia game and do something different besides walk the halls in the hospital. What a summer we have had…much different than I could ever have imagined. It won’t feel normal until the abnormal is normal. Does that make sense? Tomorrow will be a challenge. No scheduled therapy so it will be up to me to keep Zack stimulated busy and happy. Please pray that the Lord will guide me. Extra prayers that the aphasia will soon be gone. Pray for complete recovery in God’s time.