Friday, December 28th, 2007

Today started off great as we met David’s friend (and our neighbor) Khyla, and her mom, at the hospital. We all got to hang out a little with David, although he was pretty quiet, which is typical for morning. Khyla went with him to OT, while Patty and I took care of some other Air Force things.

When we finally found them in the “quiet room” of the gym, David was pulling playing cards off of the Velcro board. The board is probably 2 feet high by 3 feet long. Georgette, the therapist, would ask David to pull off all of the 3’s, then the Jacks, etc. When they were done you could see the pattern of the cards that David missed, and it represented his field of vision, or at least his minds perception of it. We think that David’s eyes see O.K., (he’s probably still color blind!), it’s that his brain isn’t interpreting correctly the information that the eyes are sending it. The brain doesn’t recognize the left side, and those were the cards that David could not ‘see’. Pretty interesting!

Khyla’s mom brought back an In-N-Out vanilla shake for David’s lunch and he drank half of it, which is a record, as well as eating some of the Mac-N-Cheese that Patty made him.

The entire staff has decided that David should use a hand signal when he wants to let them know that he is in pain, or wants them to stop doing something. He is supposed to raise his right hand up, in kind of a ‘back off’ motion. This way, even if he is too tired to communicate verbally, he can express himself without hitting them. Today David’s speech therapist asked if David remembered what that sign was, and to show him. David promptly ‘flipped him off’, and Bruce said, “That will work too”.

We all got to see David just a little bit about dinnertime, but he was ready for bed again early.

There is a vacant room across the hall that has a modified sink in it. It has been raised a little higher, and has added ‘spacers’ to bring it out from the wall more. David tried it out, and it worked better for him. We don’t know if they will let him change rooms, but it might be nice.

Yesterday they cut David’s sedation meds by one third, and have cut it back another
third today.

Thanks for all of your prayers, as we know that they are helping.

Steve