Wednesday November 21, 2007

From Wednesday (I couldn’t get the internet to work in my hotel…sorry!)

It has been so great to see David again! I cannot believe how much he has changed since we last saw him, and yes, I do read the blogs :o)! I guess there is a lot that’s up for interpretation, such as how long it might take David to complete a “task,” or how graceful he is at performing it. And I’ve been reading the blogs with the David that I saw last, who was much slower and less obvious at completing commands. It turns out that in some instances his response time is just as quick as you or me, and he DEFINITELY understands what we’re saying!!

Today Christa, Mike and I quizzed him on his multiplication facts and he showed his answers on his right hand super quick- which means the facts were pretty simple, but he gave us 4 fingers for 2x2, and 3 for 3x1. My brother’s a genius I tell you! We got some high fives on command and he waved goodbye to several of his nurses/therapists when we asked him to. He pointed out the words “Christa,” “Love,” and “Mike” on a board. We gave him a pen to a magna-doodle board and asked him to write his name, but that was pretty scribbled and unrecognizable. He seemed really intent and looked like he was writing paragraphs for us to read… Someday soon. He thumb wrestled with me this morning, and I mean really thumb wrestled. He even did the pre-wrestle part of moving his thumb side to side before attacking mine. I was impressed. And he scratched Christa’s back a bit when she asked him to. At one point Mike was sitting off to his right, and started talking to him about video games, and David turns his head and eyes to him and just listened like nothing had changed. When we’ve been playing catch, he’s been sort of flicking the balls after he “winds” up, but today he really threw the ball hard at Mike. David loves to pull at our gloves, snapping the fingers off one at a time. I won’t let him pull mine because I have a terrible fear of rubber bands- from when David and Kevin Huddleston used to chase me around the house with their stupid rubber band guns. Many of his behaviors are really repetitive, and he’ll continue with them until he’s distracted with something else or he gets bored, but he seems to have control of what he’s doing. And some things aren’t always consistent, like him answering our questions with a thumbs up or nod. He likes to get our attention by holding his hand out to us, and it was nice to know when he needed or wanted something. We can’t wait until we have a definite communication system, and I don’t think it will be long.

We saw PT and OT a couple times today. They sat David up in his chair twice, and it was really neat to see him help them out so much. He got to stand up 3 times with support for about 5 minutes each. I think that wore him out and he nodded that he wanted to get back in bed after that. Speech therapy came in after that, but David fell almost instantly into REM sleep. We decided to let him sleep and we left for the night, hoping he would get better sleep tonight ‘cause he’s still only sleeping an hour or two at night.

Thanks for your prayers! It’s wonderful to see God in action and answering our prayers! And thanks for your comments, they remind us of whose helping fight David’s battle through prayer and support! Brian wasn't able to make his flight tonight- he had to work today and probably tomorrow. Hopefully he'll be able to make it this weekend, I know that it's imortant to David to see him.

Have a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow! We have a lot to be thankful for!
-Laura