Josh and Me at Torrey Pines Lodge having breakfast.
Mike, Angie and Tyler came to visit this summer. It was fun!
From left to right, Mike, Josh, Angie, Natalie and Tyler.
Don and Josh at Barona Casino where Josh made some money playing
Texas Hold 'Em.
This is what Josh did to his leg when he drove a golf cart!
It was horrible! This picture was taken at Scripps Hospital.
I think I better update Josh's blog before the year is over. Time is flying and before you know it Christmas will be here. I haven't updated Josh's blog in months. I am totally and completely burnt out on Josh's brain injury. I just walked in the computer room a few minutes ago and Josh had just googled, "When does Josh Mendell go back to Arizona?" Josh was reading an old blog post from 2008.... here we are two years later and it's the same old stuff. Josh keeps asking about college. Everyday he sends me a message on Facebook, "Send me back to Zona!" It's very nerve-racking and crazy... He apparently has some very vivid memories of his college days at U of A and thinks about it every now and then. I refer him to a tab in his planner which explains what happened to him and why he's not at college. I'll tell him, "Your brain needs to heal." Josh will scream, "My brain has healed!" Sometimes I'll say, "Don't you think you need a memory in order to return to college?" This is really not a good thing to say because sometimes he'll get angry. Sometimes I'll say, "Your brain is getting better, but you're not totally better." I guess the best thing to say is "Read your planner." It's better than trying to explain every time he asks...
Josh is now perseverating big time on his driver's license. He constantly asks, "Where's my driver's license?" So now we have a license tab in the back of his planner which explains why he doesn't have a driver's license. So when Josh asks this question, I say, "Read your planner." The planner explains about his DUI and the fact that the cop took his driver's license. It also explains that two days after his DUI he ended up in a coma from an overdose. He reads the planner, then goes downstairs and plays XBOX. Every so often, he'll yell, "Mom, where's my license?" It's very frustrating...
Speaking of driving, Don M., one of Josh's trainers and caregivers, let Josh drive a golf cart at the club, and Josh ended up with severe lacerations on his left leg. Instead of putting on the brakes, he stuck his leg outside of the golf cart and badly skinned his shin. It was horrible and extremely poor judgment on Don's part. I was livid. I took Josh to the hospital where they cleaned it up, put wound gel on it and covered it. He had an open wound for almost a month. I took him back to the hyperbaric oxygen clinic and he had several sessions. That's behind us now. After the injury, Josh would look at his leg and ask "What happened to my leg?" I had to make another tab in the planner called LEG and write a detailed explanation of what happened. I would tell Josh to refer to his planner whenever he asked the question. This was maddening...
It is still very hard for me to see Josh's progress, but his teachers at the ABI Program constantly tell Zack (Josh's caregiver and teacher who drives him every day to ABI) that Josh is improving. In fact, Josh is now attending the ABI Program in the afternoons as well as the mornings. The afternoon sessions are held at a cultural center downtown and are more like college classes meaning that you can pick which class you want to attend that day, such as reading comprehension, analytical reasoning and speech. This is a good thing. Josh's speech continues to be a problem and I have enrolled him in weekly sessions with Herb Hein at the Hein Speech Center. It is expensive, but hopefully will pay off over time. Herb is very animated and fun. Josh is enjoying the sessions and hopefully the constant cueing will pay off. We are constantly telling Josh, "Speak one syllable at a time...slowly." We also had a session with one of Josh's ABI teachers, Julie, who came to the house and taught us some of the exercises for the Beckman Oral Motor Assessment & Intervention method. This method actually calls for the speech teacher (or someone) to physically manipulate some of the muscles around the mouth. For example, the upper lip stretch requires that you put your index figure sideways on the upper lip and massage side to side. There are a series of exercises which we are supposed to do, but this requires that you put on rubber gloves and physically do the manipulations to the muscles. I can honestly say that I do not do this religiously with Josh. In fact, every day I say I am going to do the exercises with Josh, but then I don't. The exercises really don't take that much time, so I should definitely do them. I am just burnt out and sick of the whole thing!
I also have hired Pedro Leon, a physical therapist and brain injury consultant, to help with Josh's physical exercises. He has gone to the gym with Don on several occasions and instructed him on what he should be doing with Josh to maximize his balance and even out his left side which sustained more damage than the right side. Pedro wrote out a specific routine which Don now does with Josh when they go to the gym. Hopefully, this will help.
My nephew, Zach, came to stay with us for a few weeks this summer and was dying to go to a casino since he was 18 and could legally gamble at the Indian casinos. We went to Barona one evening. Natalie, Zach and I bopped around the casino and played slots while Josh and Don went to the poker room. Josh was walking as fast as he could. He was so thrilled to be in the casino. He knew just where to go and what to do. He ended up making some money playing Texas Hold 'Em. At first, he was down $52, but then ended up with $120. When Natalie, Zack and I went to check on him, there he was sitting with stacks of $1 chips in front of him. It looked like a lot of money, but all the chips were $1 chips. It's pretty amazing that Josh's short term memory works just fine when he's in a poker game. He was all smiles and remembered that he won for about two hours. That was fun.
That's all the news for now, folks. Thanks for keeping up with Josh's progress. Hopefully next time I update the blog I'll have some amazing breakthroughs to report.
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