Home Stretch

Good Evening All,

In 8 days dad gets to come home! We are all very excited!! He worked extremely hard today. He went down to the 4th and 1st floor with the physical therapist and walked with just his walker. He even walked down stairs, which has not been easy for him for some time now. He does not do well with open spaces. One Christmas we all went to Macy's and he had to keep finding the elevator to get around because he could not make himself get on the escalator. Once before the surgery he also told us that he had to walk through a puddle because for some reason his brain would not tell his feet how to jump over it. He said he knew he needed to jump and he's pretty sure that he could jump if someone pushed him a bit, but he could not make himself jump. Hopefully that is better post surgery. The brain is an amazing thing!

He had 'swallowing' this morning and it went better than last night, but still not great. The speech and language pathologist explained to us what is happening. When we eat, our vocal cords come together so that food can pass down. Because dad has a paralyzed vocal cord, the right cord is not meeting the left cord thus making it difficult for him to eat without choking. The vocal cords also come together when we talk and vibrate off of each other to make sound, hence the reason he is so quiet and hoarse sounding. Speaking of hoarse, he is eating like a horse. He enjoyed his lunch today and tried much harder at eating the "right" way. In speech today they gave him a cognitive assessment. The test measured executive functioning, memory skills, and language skills. His score from today was compared to a score that he obtained on 10/21/2009. He scored within the normal limits on all areas this time. Last time he scored all over the board, in the severe, mild, moderate and normal limits. He has greatly improved since then. Today the speech therapist told us that everyone loves him and says that he is so nice, which was nice to hear. His neighbor George makes him laugh and they have formed a bond.

They had to sew his eye back up today. It was really red and irritated. I am not sure what the game plan is for that now, but I'm assuming they just want to watch it and see if it is healing. Dad will have to come back in December for his check-up's. He may also have a consultation with an ENT at Loyola sometime to see if they can inject something into his right vocal cord to make it meet his left vocal cord better so that he will hopefully be able to swallow and eat better.

I made it home safely in my mom's car! So, if you see mom's Camry riding around town, don't get too excited, it's just me. The reason I'm in her car is because I lost my keys. Yes, that's right, lost them. If you know me, that is not shocking, but it is very inconvenient and frustrating. Oh well, it could be worse and like mom said, no one is hurt and that is always a positive! I hope you all have a great evening and thanks for reading.

Love,

Cejae