September 26, 2012

Family Training is done!

Gretchen is actually doing quite well.  She still needs to be protected from falling, even though the therapists say she is able to catch her balance.  All agree that physically she is fine, the problems now are with the mental recovery.  The thing that I have noticed is that she needs interaction to keep her mental processes working.  That will happen more now that she will be home on Friday (she also will have fewer breaks from activity).

Gretchen's memory is actually doing better than it appears.  The problem is that her memory is not agile.  We were talking and she can remember things vaguely.  As we talked they became more clear and she was able to remember more.  Short term memory is the real issue.  She may not remember what she did 5 minutes ago but if you can get her started and stay with the topic she will remember amazing things.

I learned that she will probably have three hours of outpatient therapy three times a week for a few months.  Gretchen wasn't thrilled about that.  I reminded her that there are some things that they can do that we can't.

During the Speech Therapy section we learned about the exercises that she needs to do to improve her swallowing and her speech.  Several of them were similar to vocal exercises that she has done for singing.  Afterward I talked to Gretchen about getting some voice lessons from her father once he gets back from a trip that he has planned.  She was agreeable to that.

I've learned that there are some things that we should do to make our house "safe" for Gretchen.  The main things are related to bathing (grab bars, etc.).  The other thing is that, given her sort term memory issues, Gretchen is not allowed to cook, at least not unsupervised (which means that I will be involved since Peter is also prone to distraction).  Looks like I will be busy for a while since she can't bath alone or cook alone.

Pray for us this weekend.  I need to spend the weekend judging whether or not Peter will be sufficient supervision for her during my workday.  If not I will need to make other arrangements.