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Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Wednesday

Linda got the results of her SPCT exam. It was completely normal aside from the part about having had a brain stem stoke. So, that's good.

We're still eating, if slowly. It took about 2 hours to eat breakfast this morning.

She is getting a new skill. She can contract the thigh muscles used to lift your knee from the floor (i.e. marching highstep). It's really weak and she can't actually lift her foot off the floor, but it seems to be there.

She got a new wheelchair today. This one is much smaller and lighter, and she sits up straighter in it. It doesn't have a headrest so she has to hold her own head up all of the time, but that doen't seem to be a problem. Although it sounds small, a new wheelchair is actually big progress.

Her speaking skills are improving really well. She has a few words that can be understood in context, like "no." At lunch, her "ham" was unmistakeable as well. Most of the time, her language can't be deciphered yet, and sometimes what actually comes out of her mouth is so far from what she expects that it makes her laugh. But she did manage to answer a question for me completely orally tonight. She often laughs at unexpected times, so I asked her what she was laughing at. I had to have her spell the last word (orally, not with the letter board), but she was able to say, "I laugh at myself." I'll be honest; not even her speech therapist would have understood the whole sentence, but I talk with her a lot and have some advantage there.

We did have one fun speaking moment this afternoon. The speech therapist encouraged us to write down words on 3x5 cards to practice with. At the end of our session, I announced that we had a surprise (a word we had sort of stumbled upon). I held up a card reading EYEBROW and the therapist said, "No way." We all laughed a lot when Linda gave a slightly abused but completely distinguishable rendering of the word, including the BR sound.