Monday, January 12, 2009

We So Got In Trouble

Yesterday my dad arrived around 2:30pm and my mom was in doing physical therapy. She was wanting to know where we were. She was so upset that we were not there earlier. We were so in trouble. We got talked to about it. I slept until about 10am. It was my fault. She is the one that kept us up so late the night before. I was so tired. And yes I am bad, I didn't go to church. It started at 9am.

While she was finishing her PT, the speech pathologist (Pam) stopped us and wanted to tell us about her progress. She was so nice and so thrilled. Sunday's are a slow day so she was able to spend quite a bit of time with mom. Mom has been doing a lot of automatic speech recognition like 'hello'. She said that mom was willing herself around the room all morning looking at posters and cards. She rolled herself to the door, pointed at Pam and motioned her in to show her something. It was another picture of Gunnar that she had found in a book. She said 'Gunnar' pretty clearly. That was the second time that she has done that. One of the things they do in therapy is fill in the blank things such as bouquet of ______ and mom fills in the blank. One of them was a dozen of _________. Pam said that the answer is usually eggs but mom, very clearly, said 'donuts'. Pam laughed because mom had this look of surprise on her face. When she catches herself saying real words she is usually shocked herself. It is pretty funny. Pam told us that she got into speech pathology because of people just like mom. She just loves seeing progress and commented on how amazing the process is.

Mom had a little more PT. Since it is Sunday, it was a pretty light workout. During our downtime, we will often wheel around the halls. It is just one big racetrack circle. There are 22 rooms but only 10 patients so we started looking in the rooms noticing much better chairs than the ones in mom's room. Late last night, dad and I started hauling the better chairs back. The nurses found it pretty funny and could care less. We rearranged mom's room to make it work. They both recline with high backs...of course we are going to take them. Mom watched a little more TV while we were doing that and then was ready for bed around 9pm. She needed rest for her busy next day.
Since being here, I feel like I live here in some very weird way. I can get to quite a few places and the city is pretty easy to figure out. Traffic is a breeze to navigate. My dad pretty much drives but when I was driving around Christmas time, it was so easy. Something that I did realize is that I never want to live far from my sisters. Brent is just not the same. I miss my sisters. I miss seeing them every week. I am so glad that we live so close to each other. I also realized why we call them Californian rolling stops. They have 4-way stops or just plain stop signs everywhere! They drive us nuts. They have them in spots that make no sense. My dad also jokingly informed me that the only reason he brought me was to be the journalist of what has been happening with my mom and be the occassional helper. He was totally teasing but he does ask all of the time if I got this updated. The hospital and late nights just wears me out. But now this is updated and it feels great.

6 clever remarks:

Anonymous said...

Thank you Kristi for keeping up with this. It is a job in itself, but it sure means a lot to me! It is so great to see the progress and the funny moments along the way. Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

Hi kristi,
Your mom is such an amazing woman I can't imagine her having anything but a speedy recovery!
we love and miss her so much and we pray for all of you daily. I also thank you as Adria said it does mean so much to us to keep up to date with how things are going.

Mindy said...

goodness, does anyone know how to cook around there. Going out to lunch and dinner seems to be often! I laughed when I read the sister thing and how Brent is just not the same. I love you guys and hope you come home soon!

Brittney said...

It sounds like your mom is doing well considering! Hopefully she'll keep up the good work and you'll be home in no time!

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Thank you so much for your awesome blog. I love reading all your updates on your mom and what you are up to. I so happy to see the pictures of your mom. She looks great!
Keep up the good work.

Jeff and Sandy Gale said...

Thank you for the updates on your mom. I'm glad to know of the progress she is making. I hope that you are able to bring her back to Boise soon so I can visit her. Take care of yourself...It's a lot of work and you are so great at it. I think the sense of humor that family has is so wonderful and helps get through these times. Isn't laughter great!