"Your stomach's hungry"

So right now I am sitting in the hospital dining room writing this as there is no other place here that gets the wireless connection. Bummer because I would love to do this in my mom's room. Today I didn't take any notes. Not sure why but I just didn't for some reason. We got here mid morning to find that my mom was in speech therapy. We didn't bug them but hung out in here room instead. She was able to have about an hour nap before therapy started back up. The occupation therapist, Katie, came in and taught us some arm exercises that we need to do with her. They will keep her fingers and arms from getting stiff so when she does regain movement, she will still have some of that flexibility. If these exercises were not done, her fingers would remain curled and her arm would be stiff overall.

After that, mom had PT, with Eric. He is my favorite one. He is so funny with mom and works so well with her. Today they worked on balance things and Eric was more than willing to do things for great pictures. The first one was getting mom to balance duct taped phonebooks with her hand on a tipped barstool. She was able to keep the barstool tipped for a while. She would pull the stool in and move it back with her shoulder. We were all so excited because that means the muscles in her shoulders are firing. There is movement in there. When my dad showed up, we had to show him her "trick". We were all laughing. Eric then helped her do again so that she can work on her posture etc.

I just love this picture of mom! It is perfect. She looks so proud of herself and much like herself in general. Her smile is great and looks so much better. When we first got here, we asked her to smile and it really was just an open mouth. So much better, wouldn't you agree?In the last post, I mentioned that she worked on reaching to her left. This is what she was doing. She had to grab these cones from where ever they were holding them. It would really force her to reach towards her left, or bend forward (really scary), or reach across her or behind her. All things to strengthen her balance as well as her awareness. Okay so this next picture was secretly taken because I really wanted a picture of this nurse. Her name is Vicki and she is originally from Nebraska. She is hilarious! but so strange at the same time. We think she looks like the girl on The Night Before Christmas. Her eyes are so dark, she is really tall and soooo skinny. She wears her glasses on the end of her nose, and a fanny pack around her waste. Her hair is always half up to. Not sure why she doesn't do it completely one way or the other. Such an odd duck but great. She keeps us laughing and does her job very well.Mom was done with all therapies for the day. She was free and clear for whatever this afternoon. While mom was taking a nap, dad and I went to a movie and checked out Fry's Electronics. That place is humongous!! I would have much rather been over at the Home Depot than an electronics store. I can't stand those places. We got something to eat and headed back to the hospital. I knew mom would not be super happy because we weren't there to talk to her during dinner. She usually eats in her room because we are there but tonight she had to eat in the dining room in front of a mirror (that helps them see their mouth, etc). She wasn't thrilled. She did say that there was dessert again. I couldn't understand what kind but it was there. Oh ya, I forgot to mention that the speech therapist may start incorporating this book that Heidi made for my dad's birthday while he was in Iraq. It has a page dedicated to each of our families and one just for Gunnar with names and birthdays. The PT's and SP also found out today that mom's discharge will be Friday. They were pretty bummed and will really miss her. They have loved working with her. She just cracks everybody up here. Her personality is coming around. I also forgot to mention that the title for my post came from right before lunch. We were headed towards the physical therapy gym because therapy was going to start. My stomach growled really loud. I said, "my stomach's hungry. It growled." She then said quite clearly, "your stomachs hungry." Little things like this are continuing to happen.