Chester's Instructions

Hello everyone,

What a wonderful day this has been. Seeing Chester so bright and spry. When I came today he was working with the speech therapist. He is doing very well, better than they expected. We keep hearing that statement. Although he is not back to his 'old' self, and may never be, the 'new' self is working very hard to recover from the past week, and even from the last couple of months.

He still does not have control of his right leg, and can not go home until he does. He will be moved to Herrick Campus, a part of Alta Bates Hospital where all rehabilitation happens, and the Physical, Occupational, and Speech therapies will be continued there. We expect the move to happen sometime next week. We have to take everything one step at a time, and those of you who would like time lines, well, we just don't have them. Its a day to day movement at this point.

There was a bit of juggling of rooms today. He was sharing the room, and the other fellow had the window. He was discharged, and we moved Chester to the window position, only to have the nurses come and tell him he had to move to another room, and not to the window position. They needed his room for women patients, and would not allow men and women to share the same room. The nurse was very apological, but it was a huge disappointment. He was promised that he will get the first window position that becomes available.

The other information that I wish to impart was the terms that the speech therapist gave us today. His brain is dealing with two things: Apraxia and Aphasia. He is having a hard time with some of the simple things... ABC's, months of the year, counting. And at other times, there is no problem at all. When the speech therapist picked up a pen and asked him what it was, he said a word that was not pen. He wrote it down... and it seemed that it was pen in Russian... he realized that he came up with pen in Russian. Russian and Danish are his second languages. The brain is so amazing.

So Chester is working very hard with all his therapies. It exhausts him. I made a list of words for him to remember when he gets frustrated. Wait, pause, breathe, and slow down. Its up on the wall as a reminder.

Marilyn's instructions for Chester, posted on the wall as a reminder.

He is not taking calls and he is not allowing visitors. I know that many of you would like to visit, but he just can not deal with so much activity, and trying to speak and explain things to yet another person. He wants to respond to people, and he just needs to pay attention to himself. Your continued prayers/healing energy/ and other wuwu stuff is still having a profound effect on his amazing recovery. Please keep it up. I know his recovery is beyond expectations because of your presence in his life... and that tether that you have going to him.

I'm off to work for two days. Others will keep you posted, and if not, I will do so on Monday.

Peace and Love to you All, Marilyn

Links:

• Aphasia Fact Sheet, includes detailed information (thank you Barbara!)


• Aphasia (same link as in text above), a briefer definition from http://www.answers.com/ (an excellent resource).


• Apraxia, ditto.