Josh gets rave reviews today!

Friday, July 6, 2007

I arrive at Sharp around 11 a.m. and Josh is in the gym with his occupational therapists, Sara and Cindi.  They are working out his arms and lifting them high above his head.  Josh is acting appropriately and is totally cooperative.  Then they get Josh up and work on throwing balls.  Throwing is very difficult since Josh's fluidity and movement is not automatic.  Josh gets into the throwing position lifting his arm, pulling it back and then he freezes in that position sometimes for minutes....   finally he throws the ball.  He's getting much better at this.  He tries to psych himself up counting 3, 2, 1...before finally releasing the ball - this is motor aphasia, that delayed reaction. 

Josh is determined.  If you try to help him, he tells you not to.  If you're playing catch with him and you try to get closer to help him out, he tells you to get back.  This is a good thing.

Dr. Stenehjem arrives and tells us that he has cut Josh's blood pressure medicine way down, almost in half and that he is doing well with that.  He tells us Josh is doing great.  He tells Josh to open up the fingers of his left hand and Josh does it.  Dr. S asks him if he wants to take a break or continue working and Josh says he wants to continue working.... 

I bump into Elizabeth, one of Josh's speech therapists, in the hallway and she tells me Josh is doing incredibly well.  She hadn't worked with him in a few days and she could see the progress.  She said he was at about 90% responding to her questions whereas a few days prior he was at about 60%.  This is all music to my ears! 

After OT, we're all hanging outside in the garden area with Josh, my girlfriend Susan Magee and her daughter, Magee.  We're all shooting the breeze talking about people that Magee went to school with.  She's twenty and is a student at UC Berkeley.   Josh is understanding everything and is participating in the conversation.  He seemed to be enjoying himself.   Then we changed the conversation to Josh's favorite foods and he started talking about steak and lobster, Board and Brew in Del Mar and Roberto's Taco Shop. 

I gave Josh a Naked Juice smoothy and he practically inhaled it.  Then he said he wanted another!  He said it was great.  Then very casuallyJosh says he wants to use the restroom.  I wheel him back into his room.  He's getting up from his wheelchair heading to the bathroom.  He tells me to close the door and get out.  I call the nurse.  They help Josh and he does what he needs to do.  I don't want to act like an idiot and embarrass Josh, but I ran to the nurses station, made the announcement and everyone clapped!    Josh is on his way to being totally independent!   When you are totally well, Josh, I hope you never read this blog because I know you will kill me! 

Josh had dinner, got situated in bed and watched the World Cup on ESPN.  We'll see what tomorrow brings....  

By the way, we haven't had hbot in three days.  I intentionally cancelled his appointments since I wanted to see if I could see a difference in Josh.  It appears that he was more cognitive, more reasonable and appropriate in the past few days.  We are going to hbot Saturday.  If he acts crazy after the treatment and seems to regress I will have to reconsider continuing or just do tuneups twice a week and access the situation.   He's approaching the 40 treatment mark.