A long day!

Frank and Dean (seen in the picture) visited Randy this evening. He loved it! They talked a little work, they talked a little flying and Randy loved all of it!

We hadn't been able to really figure out how much of Randy's memory from before the accident was gone. While they were here, Dean and Frank were asking him about things that happened in May and he could remember them. After they left, his mom, sister and I started talking about my brother's wedding which took place the Saturday before the accident and Randy started remembering it and other things that happened that weekend. As things are talked about, I think he they are starting to come back to him.

In addition to his 4 hours of therapy today, Randy also met with a neuropsychologist and did an hour and a half of testing to see where Randy's deficits are. When asking Randy questions, Randy would have to take a second to think of the answer except when he asked Randy how his memory is ~ Randy answered very quickly "crappy", and then when he asked Randy if he smoked, Randy answered "not anymore" and the Dr said "let me take a guess ~ you quit on June 20th?" and Randy laughed and said "Yep". From the testing, the Dr said Randy's deficits are his memory, his executive reasoning, and the speed at which he processes information tends to be rather slow.

For his speech classes today, Randy was given two objects and had to give similarities and differences. For the most part, he did quite well. For some reason, though, day and night tripped him up, but he did very well with smile and frown ~ even getting the emotions behind the two. During his second class, she did the drill again where she would read a paragraph and give statements and Randy would have to say if the statement was true, false or unknown. One paragraph was about people getting snowed in and the statement was asking if the story could have taken place at the North Pole and Randy said that statement was true. The therapist asked Randy if families could really live at the North Pole and she asked him what lived there and Randy responded reindeer. The therapist didn't get it and went on to tell him that people don't live at the North Pole, so I commented that Santa didn't count and his sister said the elves don't count as families. The therapist finally got it and laughed. Yes, Randy still has his sense of humor!

During occupational therapy, the therapist took Randy outside and had him watering flowers. She made him use his left hand to do it ~ making him stretch out to reach some of them. Then she had him walk around the flower area to work on maintaining balance. He also worked with the pegs again, having to put them into a board into a given pattern. For some of them, the therapist had him put the pegs in with his left hand. It was difficult for him, but he was able to do it. His left hand gets better everday.

For physical therapy, one therapist had him doing a bean bag toss. She would hold the bean bags and him reach to get them and then he had to toss them into a net basket. He did quite well with getting them into the basket.

I have been posting pictures on an msn space for Randy to view. Anyone can find them here: http://rarush.spaces.live.com/photos/ under the rehab album.