Randy got a day pass!

Great news ~ Randy was given approval to have 2 day passes this weekend. So we can bring him home Saturday and Sunday (but he can't stay the night with us). With Saturday, though, he can't miss any classes. Thankfully he only have physical therapy scheduled, but they scheduled it right in the middle of the day. I will see if I can get it moved, but if not, we have to work around it.

Randy is so excited. He wants to be home. Anyone that was planning on coming to visit Randy this weekend is more than welcome to come to the house to see him. You can call my cell to make sure we are there ~ 206.226.1488.

As for Randy's day today: he has become addicted to a concentration game that the speech therapist was telling him she played all of the time. Here is the website for it http://www.zefrank.com/memory/index.html. I had to make him turn the computer off last night around 11 in order to go to sleep and as soon as he had a chance today, he was asking to play it. Also today, Cass was playing WordWhomp (it is a game in which you are given 6 letters and you have to see how many words you can make out of those 6 letters in the timeframe given and there is always at least 1 word that can be made with all letters). Cass was struggling a bit with it and Randy looked over and told her the 6 letter word. He did great at helping her out with a few others as well.

In physical therapy, he of course worked on his walking. That keeps getting better every day. He also practiced going up and down stairs and we practiced doing it with two people with no use of the railing so we could be prepared for this weekend. We will have railings by next weekend, but Randy wanted to do his day pass now.

In speech, the first therapist did a test that was given to Randy last Saturday ~ one with 2 different shapes that came in 2 different sizes with 5 colors each. It tests your listening skills and comprehension of directions. I saw a big improvement fromt he last time. He only got 2 wrong this time and last time he had struggled through a lot of it. She also asked him random questions such as who is George Washington, where is Las Vegas, what do you do to get a car ready for winter, where is the Golden Gate Bridge, and who said "Give me Liberty or give me death". He did great with all of the questions except that last one so she gave him the assignment to figure out who said it. As soon as he had a break from classes, he jumped on the computer and looked up the answer.

In the second speech class, that therapist worked on his recall memory. She read him short paragraphs and then read statements that he had to determine were true, false or unknown about the paragraph. I saw a definite improvement in his ability to recall what was read than from last week.

One thing I noticed throughout the speech classes was that, when given instructions for doing something, Randy would repeat it in his own words to cement it in his mind and to make sure he was understand the instructions. That has really helped him. He is just improving so much. Little improvements everyday.

His left side is getting stronger and stronger. The occupational therapists today really worked on stretching out that arm and building a little bit of tone. The picture is one contraption they used where he had to reach up with his arm and pull the things down. He was really pushing his arm to work. He is so determined and I am so thankful for that. At this point, he could easily be angery or letting himself get frustrated but he isn't. He keeps pushing to get better and he keeps being the great, polite man he has always been ~ thanking everyone for everything and telling me constantly how much he appreciates all I am doing. I have fallen in love with him more through this whole experience!

With Randy's eyes, the eye doctor came in today to review his vision. He was great ~ he knew the right questions to ask Randy. I thought the double vision was all of the time with everything and it isn't. Randy can focus on things close ~ so things he can touch. The doctor said it is because of how the eyes, arms, and legs are sending messages to the brain. There was some damage to some nerve (he told me which one and all I can remember of the name is Superior) on the right side, not the left which I thought was interesting, that is causing the issue. He said it could be caused by swelling and might get better as swelling goes down, which can take months. For right now, we can help by doing the near far thing with him ~ getting close to him where he can see one of us, then slowley backing up making him focus farther out but still only seeing one of us. When I took him to the bathroom, he was seeing two sinks so I had him reach his hand in front of him and slowly take it out until it touched the since and he could see only the one sink, so that really helps him.

Last thing we have been having issues with is pain in the area where his head was hit. He has been having it the last couple of days, but I kept forgetting to post about it. The doctor said he sees no signs of infection and since Randy is continuing to improve in his therapies instead of declining, he is lead to believe that he is feeling more pain due to moving around more and the decrease in medications (the doctor completely stopped the Seroquel and Randy is doing great without it ~ more energy throughout the day). He said they should hopefully die down or stop within the next couple weeks.

I think that is it for updates. I know the posts have been long lately, but he is doing so much and I want to make sure I capture it. He reads through the blog regularly and I think it is a good reminder of the things he has done. He is loving reading the comments and has read all of the emails people are sending, though he still hasn't had a chance to reply back to many of them. He wanted me to put in here that even though he hasn't had the opportunity to respond he is thankful for the emails and blog comments from everyone.