Jean's Progress

Hello Family & Friends,

Thank you to my family for all the caring attention you have given me every day since Jan. 6th and while I have been recovering! I would not be this far along without your help! Your work in making my memory return has been invaluable!

Thanks for all the visits, phone calls, cards, pictures & notes; to Nathan & Brienne for 2 bouquets, the Dean Petrie family and Joyce & Jim for their plants, and to Julie & Ray, the Westlins & the Bucks for their bouquets. From many others, we have been blessed to receive prepared meals that have all been delicious!

I hope I have thanked everyone who helped me in any way as I recover from this incident. Thank you all!

Love, Jean

Post from Diana - Thursday, Feb. 10

Just a short post to let you all know Mom continues to show improvement! She has overcome so many obstacles in just a month! Changes from day to day are harder to see now since she's doing so well...so I probably won't be posting quite as often as before. (That's a good thing!!)

There is still work to be done and we feel fortunate to have some really good resources about Aphasia...as well as a very good speech therapist at Azer. Also, Dick and Lynn Alderman were here this week and Lynn (another speech expert) had some ideas and resources for mom too. Thanks Lynn...(and we're kind of hoping you can continue to be our "home speech therapist" for awhile if/when it works for you!"

Mom is writing in a daily journal, and has written and sent some thank you's on her own which is wonderful! She hasn't done much on her laptop yet, however, when I went over this morning...to my surprise...she was on her computer doing some online bill paying! I helped her a little...but she knew how to do it! And fortunately, Di and I, who had to figure out her system and pay some bills in January, didn't mess things up too much! Ha! She's adjusted to being home very well and we are just amazed at the daily things she is able to do when we think that only 3 weeks ago, she could hardly string any words together to carry on a small conversation. As I've said before...the brain is an amazing thing...it's fascinating.

She's enjoyed her visitors...and thank you, thank you for all of the food and meals that have been provided since Mom came home. It's so nice for me to not have to worry about their meals and it gives me more time to work on homework with mom too.

God Bless all of you who have helped us in so many ways this past month. We'll keep pushing on and continue to pray for a full recovery.

Post from Diana - Tuesday

I don't have too much else to report from Sunday after Jamie & Di left. Mom and Dad did stay here for another game of cards, football food, and the very exciting first half of the superbowl game! (I know mom got a kick out of Greg's excitement over the game.) Go Pack Go!! They left at halftime but watched the rest of the game at home.

On Monday, I picked up some crosswords, word searches, and another puzzle variety book. I made mom do a word search while I worked on a crossword. We both helped each other. She is not a big fan of doing any of them...but I'm going to push to keep her doing them and work her brain. There's all kinds of games and puzzles we have been encouraged to play with her...however...we're finding cards is her favorite, of course. We'll be mixing it up. The girls and I stopped by for just a little while after supper and I noticed Mom had written out a few thank you's. She had addressed and sealed them...and Dad didn't know she had done it until they were all ready to go. We're curious, of course, how she did in writing them? Very encouraging that she thought to write some thank you's all on her own. Getting ideas down on paper and journaling are something she's really supposed to be working on.

Dick & Lynn will be visiting today and I'm sure Lynn will be anxious to see how mom is doing and offer some of her ideas and expertise.

Sunday..Jamie

Short post for Sunday....mom had another really good day. We played some cards in the morning Di, Emily, Dad, Mom and I. Dad kicked us all, but mom was right in there!

We all went over to Diana's for lunch and watched the pregame prior to my family heading back to Oswego. We had a great lunch and visit there before we had to leave.

This will be a very busy week for mom, which is great. She has therapy on Wednesday and Friday in Galesburg. In between there, she has a couple out of town visits planned from Dick and Lynn Alderman and Harold and Norma are planning to make it over from Peoria as well.

Thanks for keeping mom and dad in your thoughts and prayers.....perhaps Diana can add some more from Sunday....I'm not sure if mom and dad watched some or all of the Super Bowl at their house, but I would imagine they did at least watch some of it there.....I'm pretty sure mom was rooting for the Packers based on Greg and Andrew's support! The grandkids always have the strongest influence. HAHAHA!

Saturday--Jamie

Quick update here on Saturday...mom is in playing a game of Shanghai (rummy game of cards) with Diana, Greg, Kimberly, Dad and I rotating, and Di and David rotating in and out. We are cooking dinner while the game goes on...tonight it's Mexican chicken (Di's) and marinated chicken chunks (David)--I can't wait for the HOT ones David has made. Marinated in a firecracker hot sauce we gave him from Galena! YUM!!! It's so great to see mom play and name off the suits with no problem at all.....just a few days ago she was still getting them confused when we asked her to name them.

Mom, Dad, David, and Greg played last night.... as they were tallying up their scores--Greg, who had come from behind, gets ready to tell mom his score and she says so mom says "and then there's Beetle Bomb." She says some funny things that really make us all laugh....including herself!

Tomorrow the church is bringing communion down to house for mom and dad....not quite ready to go out to church, but probably thinking by next week.

Thanks for following everyone....she is doing well.

Diana's post - Friday Feb.4

Hello Everyone...

Mom is very happy to be home...and we were very happy to get her home Monday before the blizzard hit! She is enjoying having some visitors. For those of you who have followed this blog and have seen her now...you're probably amazed (like we are) at the progress she has made. She looks great and seems to carry on a conversation pretty well. She still has problems with finding and getting out some words and ideas...and for those of you who would like to visit her...just be patient and give her time to think if she can't get the words out. We'd like for her to find those words and get them out on her own...however, we don't want her to get too frustrated either...sometimes it will come to her with a little bit of time. Speech therapy is working with teaching her to "talk around a word." If she can't think of a word...she thinks about other things relating to the word: category, function, properties, association, etc. and then it helps her to find that word.

We went to both out-patient OT and speech yesterday and formulated some goals for mom to work towards as well as got some new "homework" ideas to work on at home. She has been doing a little laundry and helping get food out for meals as well as helping with clean-up which is all good in getting her back to feeling more "normal" at home. No cooking yet...and she has been advised not to do that for awhile. Strangely enough, she has shown little interest in her computer so far...but we're hoping before long she will be shooting off some emails to some of you! We will be working hard on getting her to think of things to formulate sentences about... and then writing those ideas down. She is to start a daily journal and try to get some things down in writing. As she progresses in doing this, hopefully she will want to start doing some emailing again. We still see progress every day...Jamie said she was reading some things from the paper this morning...and then telling him about what she read. Very important that she understands what she is reading. That is something else we're working on...making sure she understands what she reads and what we're talking about in conversation. We've felt all along she understands what we talk about with her...but we forget that there are times when a word or words sound like a foreign language to her and she just might not completely understand. We might just rephrase it or repeat it for her and then she'll get it. The more I learn about the brain...the more amazing it is! The therapists have prepared us that now that she's home...we might be seeing some more frustration as she wants to be doing everything she used to do and can't. So we again ask for your prayers for patience and healing and thank you all for your support in so many ways.

Monday-Jamie

Well...we missed writing yesterday because we were very busy....getting mom home. Actually, she was pretty anxious. After sending quite a bit of items home with us Sunday night, she met us at the door when we got to Bounce Back yesterday morning. It was very hard for her to sit around for an hour and a half or so before the nurse was ready to come and release her. I think 20 days in Bounce Back was enough for mom. ")

After a short ride to Galva.....she was finally HOME!!! Didn't take her long before she was exploring around....taking in the "damage" that dad and I had done....haha---not really....she found it in pretty good shape and fully stocked, thanks to a late night shopping trip the night before by Diana. Mom did help arrange the items we brought back from Bounce Back.

David came over (took a half day off of school as he expected the storm, which is here tonight, would keep him in Galesburg for a couple days) as he wanted to be here when mom got home. We took a ride over to see Grandma Lil, who had yet to see mom since her stroke. Grandma was so relieved to see her...she had been so worried as you might imagine. It was a very happy reunion. We had a very nice visit with grandma--mom, dad, David, Diana and I.

The rest of the day was spent just settling in at home....doing a little speech therapy....and enjoying having mom home.

Monday

This morning (Feb 1) mom had another really good day. She went up and showered and prepared for the day on her own, with us close by in case she needed us for anything......which she didn't. Dad and I worked with mom this morning on her speech therapy, but I gotta say....she has mastered so much of the things we were given to work on with her. We are being challenged ourselves to know exactly what areas to work on at this point. If the storm allows, we will have our first outpatient therapy in Galesburg on Thursday and will look for some new direction.

Mom had visitors this afternoon along with food rolling in for lunches and dinners. Tonight she watched one of the shows she enjoys....NCIS. She looks very comfy sitting over there under her down comforter watching a show on Yellowstone Wolves right now. So comfy, one might say she is dozing now and then...haha! Thanks for continued thoughts, prayers and support. We know we still have much to work on in order for mom to get back to 100%....and this is a great place to do it. Pretty nice to get up this morning and not have to drive over to Galesburg for a change, but rather get right to "hanging out with mom" right here! ")