Saturday, August 9

The Ren rehab wing was quiet today, and the weather was fabulous, so between Tommy's two therapy sessions we sat on the outside porch and visited with some of the other patients. (Although Tommy doesn't say much, he always listens intently.)
Tommy's morning session was with a part-time physical therapist named Kirstie. After working with him at the walking bars, she discussed Tommy's difficulty advancing his right leg and his related problem of shifting his weight from side to side. She is recommending to Tim, Tommy's regular PT therapist, that Tommy be given some practice on a walker (with two therapists assisting). Tommy's right leg is still unresponsive--i.e., not getting the messages from his brain--but his right arm and hand, which were also unresponsive after the stroke, have shown steady improvement, and the therapists have explained that it is common for the leg to be the last part of the body to come back on line.
At the suggestion of one of the therapists, Tommy is now keeping a journal--each afternoon he dictates an entry to me, which I write in his black-and-white composition book. In his entry this afternoon he mentioned that he was "glad he had Kirstie because she showed an interest in me." Every few days, he reads the entries aloud and we talk about them (as we do with his photo album of family and friends).
Now that Tommy's diet has been upgraded to "mechanical soft", the food on his tray is actually recognizable. And he can now eat actual salads: While he napped before dinner, I cut up a peach and banana for him, which he polished off before his dinner tray even arrived. No surprise that there's a definite lift in his mood during mealtimes.