"Now THAT'S a Dollar Bill ... I Know That One."

Chip reporting ... Dad continues to progress at an amazing speed (considering the fact that only two weeks ago he could barely speak and was not moving his right side at all.)

A big plus for him now is that Mom orders his food a day in advance, and he has been so pleased with his "regular" meals that are not minced. Residents of the floor come together for each meal in their dining room/activity room. He consistently cleans his plate. And if he gets the attention of a duty nurse in passing, he makes sure to introduce his family if we are with him. Not to be biased or to belittle anyone in the room, but Dad is the best looking patient in the unit!

As Mom said in an earlier post, the physical therapist has given Dad the green light. All of those types of activities appear to be doing very well (motor skills, movement, etc.) When we are visiting with him, he shifts from one chair to another to keep his back from hurting, and sometimes he lounges on his bed. His roommate, Mr. Reese, that we all liked so well, went home Friday morning and he got a new roommate Friday afternoon.

Saturday and Sunday are somewhat of "off" days as it relates to therapy activities from hospital staff. The speech therapist gave Mom a stack of flash cards with everyday objects on them and told us to work with Dad on showing him the cards over the weekend.

The challenge at the moment still lies in the speech area. Dad recognizes the object and can often tell you what it does, but getting the brain to connect the thought with the visual and have the speech center direct the mouth to identify the object by name is where we are focusing our efforts at the moment.

So, we started working with Dad on these object cards. He would look at the object, begin to describe it. For example, we held up one card and he said, "Well, you know, we use that for different things." (The item was a toothbrush, and he was thinking that in addition to brushing your teeth with it, you can often use discarded ones for little cleaning jobs around the house.) But in round 1 of this therapy on the majority of the cards, he would eventually shrug his shoulders and admit he could not NAME the object. But he has no difficulty repeating the object name once we say it.

However, we revealed one card, and he exclaimed, "Now I know EXACTLY what that is ... that is a ONE ... DOLLAR ... BILL." Of course we offered up much praise on the correct answer and continued through the remainder of the cards.

The nurses had made copies of the cards for us to take with us, and Dad asked Mom to write the names of the objects on the cards. (Well, we can tell you ... Dad does not appear to have difficulty reading!) But before the next session about an hour or two later, Dad went through the copies and transcribed every object word onto a list of his own on a legal pad (his handwriting also appears to be unaffected.)

So the next round ... after about two cards, he looked over toward his hospital tray and said, "Where is my list?" We let him open his portfolio, and with nearly each remaining card, he would look at the object, look at his list, and come back with something like, "Now THAT is a PAINT ... BRUSH."

OK, so we weren't playing totally fair ... but on round three (again, an hour or two later and without his list), he began to reveal more on the object and get some of them right. For example, he looked at one and said, "Now I know that one ... we use it often." He paused and continued to think, then he looked over at Mom and said, "K .... E .... Y," spelling the word very distinctly. And with that, another celebratory moment ... so much that Mom exclaimed, "Yes ... yes! It IS a key."

Now remember ... the neurologist told us that what we have at the end of a year of recovery is probably about as good as it will get. Well, we are so thrilled at what we are seeing after two weeks, that we have great confidence in Dad's recovery.

The other challenge at the moment is that he's ready to go home. And we don't blame him! When folks are telling him that he's doing fine ... he has completed his physical therapy ... the speech therapist says he has progressed "by leaps and bounds" ... he's eating three squares a day with no problem ... he's trying to understand why he still has to be there. But Mom explains to him that they are going to give her instructions tomorrow, and then they will schedule him for release. He thinks that will still be on Wednesday, and we're leaving it at that so he will be pleasantly surprised if he gets to go home a little early.

Twice yesterday we "checked him out" of the rehab unit to roll him to another area of the hospital, such as the outdoor patio off the main cafeteria ... just to let him get out of his room for a while.

And he enjoyed listening to the Bulldog game on the radio yesterday. Once the game was done, he could tell you (and anyone who asked) that we won and the score was 45 to 16. (We all kept getting confused on the 16 part, but it's the 45 that was important, right??)