Hello People!

I just wanted to let you all know that Mom is doing AWESOME!!! She has been handling all the work with the therapists very well, and although she's pretty wiped out after they're done with her, the improvements have been dramatic. Sunday when I was there, she walked 200 feet with a walker, and only had to stop once to rest. Her speech is improving dramatically, also. Just two days ago, when I would talk to her, she could still only manage two or three consecutive words in a row that were understandable. Today when I talked to her on the phone, she was firing off full sentences. She still struggles, but I was able to understand SOOO much more of what she was saying. She told me that they weighed her today, and she has lost a lot of weight, and I told her she picked one brutal diet plan! She says her legs look like broomsticks, but she's feeling stronger every day. She also told me she has been seeing the same therapists every day, and is getting to know them on a first name basis. She seems to really like all the people that are working with her, and that's pretty important.

RIM gets her out of bed every day around 7 or 8 in the morning, and she is out of bed until after dinner. I talked to her today around 4:30 and she was still up. She said she was tired, but it felt really good to moving around again. She is seeing several different types of therapists every day, including physical, which works her legs, occupational, which works on upper body and coordination, and speech, to help her talk better. She is also going to be seeing psychologists and psychiatrists to help evaluate her thinking processes and determine what kind of damage the aneurysm did, and to what areas of her brain. She is probably going to need some help remembering some things, for example, she seems to think that it's 2005 or 2006, depending on the day you ask her, and she mentioned some things the other day that made me wonder how much of her long term memory she has. It seems to be mostly there, but somewhat jumbled. I'm sure that given some time, she will start to get things straight again. She definitely remembers all the people in her life, which is good, but she seems a little confused on who they are, in relation to her. For example, she knows I'm her son, but I think sometimes she thinks her son is still a child, and may be thinking of Kristopher or Mason as me or Daniel when we were kids. She Knows who Bob is, but the other day she was talking about my dad as though they were still married. These things will, I'm sure, work themselves out with time, and as I said earlier, she is getting better every day at a ridiculous pace.

The doctors at RIM told us that the average stay for traumatic brain injury patients there is about 18 days, and I think Mom may be slightly longer than the average, but to be honest, if she keeps moving at this pace, and barring any further setbacks, I think she will be able to come home in a month or so.

So far so good, and getting better every day!!