December 26, 2005 - Late Evening

Happy holidays everyone! Our apologies for the late post, but with the craziness of the holiday we hope everyone understands. Brenda arrived yesterday and was excited to see the dramatic change in Amanda from 3 weeks ago. Although the princess didn't call her by name yesterday, Amanda made a specific reference to some of their past souvenir collecting that let us know that she knew exactly who Brenda was. The princess' voice is becoming more audible and clear and we are able to hear most of what she says. However, her dictionary is pretty scrambled right now (words are not properly matched to their definitions and some words appear to be new creations altogether) so much of what she says doesn't make a lot of sense. But the times when it's clear and she gets the message across are stunning and we see glimpses of our sweet funny girl. Yesterday, Mandy gestured towards Ron/Kurt, turned to Brenda and said,"See what I have to put up with?". Indeed.

The biggest event of the day was that we were able to bring Simone (the favorite of her 4 cats) to the rehab center. It was almost as if someone flipped a switch to Mandy's 'on' button for a little while. Her voice became the normal "Amanda" tone as she told Simone to "hey baby girl". She spent about an hour with Simone this afternoon and we all believe that the visit was fantastically beneficial for Mandy. (As for Simone, we know she wasn't wild about the car ride, but she purred like crazy as soon as her 'mommy' began petting her and she kept it up for the entire visit.)

Moments of a certain degree of clarity are still pretty rare though. In a fully 10 hour plus day, there may be about 5 moments or exchanges where she seems "on". The concepts she is able to grasp the most quickly and respond to appropriately are generally very simple and straight-forward (i.e. are you tired? do you want to go outside?) Her attention span is about 45 seconds, but improving with each passing day. She has some better days than others but we're happy to report that both her mental and physical abilities continue to be progressing forward with each passing day.