Home Therapy Starts

Today was a busy day. With the holidays, my early recovery from my surgery and his dad visiting, I didn't push Randy doing much of the "therapy" stuff last week. We started in full swing today. We fit it in around other stuff that either needed to be done today or that Randy got distracted with, so therapy was done off and on all day.

Randy did excellent with everything today. We started the day off with talking to our attorney, going over the questions. He liked the answers that we had come up with. Somewhere in the conversation, Randy told the attorney that he (Randy) has always been long winded, but finds that he is more so now (which is true). Then a little later, Randy said he had a question and the attorney responded with "only if it isn't long winded". It was rather humorous. In all seriousness, though, it is a positive thing that Randy is able to recognize this about himself and tries to remain aware of it while talking to others.

For therapy today, Randy started out working the physical things. He worked on stretching his arms and legs and then worked on strengthening them with some small weights that he has. He also worked on his eye exercises. We taped the sheet that he has to use onto the wall so that he will be able to do them even if I am not available and that way they are very visible to remind him to work on them.

After working on physical stuff, Randy got distracted with sending someone an email. What would have taken him less than 5 minutes pre-accident, now took him an hour.

After he completed his email, he diligently went back to task and started working on the mental exercises. He played the Brain Age game, which worked him on math today and some quick short term memory things. The short term memory one is rather difficult. It quickly displays numbers with little boxes right by them and then the numbers disappear and only the boxes are left and you have to click on the boxes that would represent the numbers going from lowest to hightest. I even don't do that well on that one. Randy did alright.

Randy and I then worked on his categories exercise that he did with his speech therapist. We used her guidelines of trying to get 15 things in the given category within 30 seconds. Randy did excellent in all 3 categories I had given him. I think we need to up his goal and push him a bit more with that one.

We then moved onto spelling. I gave him 10 words (one was one that he had asked him how to spell the day before). He spelled 9 of the 10 correct and the one he got wrong was very close.

He then played chess online. I unfortunately don't know how to play, so I couldn't play with him. The online version is very nice, though. He couldn't quite remember how each piece moved and this version of it will show you the legal move of a piece if you click on it. It also times his moves, which makes him have to make quicker decisions.

The last item that Randy did was work on homework that his speech therapist had given him.

Very busy, very fruitful day.