Cathy and Zach visit Josh

Monday, August 6, 2007

Cathy and Zach, our Chicago cousins, arrived in town last Thursday.  This picture was taken yesterday in Josh's room at Sharp Rehab.  Zach went to the baseball game with Natalie. 

Josh continues to make slow, steady progress.  Physically he is doing pretty well.  He is walking alot more and is pretty steady on his feet. 

On Saturday, on the way back from hbot while he was in the wheelchair, Josh unbuckled his seat belt, went to stand up and went down head first in the van.  Luckily he caught himself with his left arm and only scraped his knee and jammed his left hand.  He was laughing and said he was okay but I was a nervous wreck asking him repeatedly if he hit his head.  Fifteen minutes later, Josh had no recollection of even falling.  He says, "Mom, what happened to my knee?"  This short term memory thing is killing me...  

In Josh's case, this short term memory loss is due to damage suffered to the hippocampus.  Earlier in the day, while Josh was in the oxygen chamber, I was reading one of Bob Sand's books called The Mind and the Brain, Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force by Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley.  They describe the hippocampus as an "unassuming little structure" involved in the formation of memories.  The back of the right hippocampus stores a mental map of the environment.  For example,  a person walks into Sharp Rehab Hospital and knows they are in the hospital.  Josh does not know he is in the hospital because that part of the brain that stores a mental map of the environment took a hit when he was without oxygen.    Hopefully he will get it back with time because new neurons can grow in the hippocampus.  It is called neurogenesis and newly generated neurons are associated with the ability to acquire memories.  So, there is hope for Josh.  Some study was done with mice which showed that new neurons could grow in the hippocampus as a result of mice exercising on a wheel in an "enriched" environment, i.e., mice that were not merely placed in a cage but in an outdoor environment with trees and plants.  So, maybe we'll put Josh on an exercise bike in the great outdoors and see what happens....  

Zach, Cathy, Josh and I played Texas Hold 'Em a few days ago and Josh won several times.  The only thing is Josh has lost his "poker face".  If you deal him a couple of aces, he yells out "Oh, wow!!"  I'll have to bring Josh one of his treatises on the psychology of playing poker...