Josh is extremely happy these days!

Josh is always laughing.  He is so happy these days.  He wakes up happy.  He's happy all day long -- he goes along with whatever I say.  I say, "Josh, go brush your teeth."  He says, "Okay, Mom."   I say, "Josh, go get dressed and get ready for therapy."  He says, "Okay, Mom,"  I say, "Josh, drink this glass of water to flush out your system."  He says, "Okay, Mom."   He is just the most pleasant kid you can imagine.  He's such a team player.   He participates willingly in all of his therapies.  It's interesting...  Pedro Leon, the physical therapist consultant that I am thinking of hiring, says, "Just wait...this will change..."

We continue to write in Josh's memory book every day telling him what day it is and what his schedule is for the day.  Josh still continuously throughout the day asks about Jerry.  "Where's Dad, Mom?"  "Did he really die?"  "Why?"   I even drove Josh to the cemetery, dragged Josh up the steep hill where Jerry's gravesite is  and showed it to Josh.  Josh looks at it and says, "Oh, wow!"  Josh remembered having gone to the cemetery and seeing the gravesite for about half an hour!!  This was a big deal for Josh since his short term memory is normally less than a minute.  Later on that afternoon Josh had no recollection of going to the cemetery.  He would read what I wrote in his memory book and say, "We didn't go to the cemetery today."  It's crazy... 

Josh's new thing is reading his high school yearbook.  He now asks me, "Why aren't I going to college?  When am I going back?"  This is a good thing, isn't it?   It is so strange....sometimes Josh thinks he's still a senior at Torrey Pines and Natalie is 13...  Other times he is "with it".  He knows he is 20 and knows Natalie is 17.  But when Natalie takes off and gets in the car to drive, Josh can't believe she has her license.  "Mom, Natalie is driving and she doesn't have her license!".....   I think with time things will fall into place.

Josh is on no meds at all.  Contrary to what the doctors say about brain injuries, Josh never sleeps in the day.  He never takes naps and will stay up all night if you lethim.  Josh is constantly asking about time.  He'll be sitting on the john and he'll scream out, "Mom, what day is it?  What month is it?  Am I going to school today?"   It's wild.

Josh's speech is still slurred.  He runs all the words together.  Next week we are having more speech therapies than physical and occupational therapies combined.  I told the scheduler at Sharp that Josh needs speech therapy more than anything else.  It is frustrating when he talks and no one can understand him.  He continues to laugh his butt off.   When I tell him, "Josh, I can't understand a word you're saying!"  He just laughs...  I tell him to speak slowly....one word at a time...  

I enrolled Josh in this program called Cognition Ignition which is a cognitive remediation program successfully used in 70 countries as a tool for the enhancement of learning potential.  This guy, David Witkowski, swears he can get Josh's short term memory back.  Josh had one session and I really liked the guy.  He is animated and uses all kinds of different techniques.  The first thing he did was give Josh a series of pictures with dots all over the pages and asked Josh to find squares and triangles.  He said, "Josh, first connect the dots and make a square, then connect the dots and make a triangle."  The dots were not numbered.  Josh breezed through the exercises.  I guess the idea is to remember what to do first.  The exercises get progressively harder...  Then he would give Josh all these cards with pictures on them and ask him to make pairings, such as a knife and a loaf of bread, a saw and a piece of wood.  Josh breezed through this exercise as well.  As the hour came to a close, Josh was getting fatiqued and was messing up....   The method used is called Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment.  Everything is comprised of paper and pencil tasks aimed at specific cognitive goals.   I figure this method has to have some validity since it has been translated into 29 languages.  Who knows?  The guy had a big ad in the San Diego Brain Injury Foundation newsletter.  I'll try it.  Josh doesn't seem to mind.  The guy asked him if he had a good time after the session and Josh said, "Yeah, I did."....   

We're continuing with hyperbaric oxygen therapy.  We have two sessions next week.  We're trying everything! 

Hopefully next time you see Josh you'll be amazed as his improvement! 

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you guys about the wildfires!  How horrible was that???  We survived the fires unscathed, but we did have to evacuate.  I knew we were in big trouble Monday morning when smoke and soot were coming our way.  There was lots of soot which came into the house through the door and window cracks.  The air quality sucked.  We immediately got our stuff together and checked into the Beach Terrace Inn in Carlsbad on the water where the sky was blue and the air was clear.  I grabbed my wedding album, my mom's wedding album, some pictures of the kids and family, my insurance policy and estate file, a suitcase full of piano music and off we went.  Josh did amazingly well.  We stayed in the hotel three nights.  I was thinking, "Gosh, on top of all the crap we're going through with Josh, our house might burn down....I guess that's par for the course...."   We were lucky!