December 27, 2005 - Evening

Today was another good day of progression in Amanda land (although bitter sweet because Ron had to head back for home). She had a busy day of occupational, physical, speech, and neuropsychology therapy and she continued to progress on all fronts.

The biggest progression was in physical therapy as Amanda climbed stairs for the first time. (Assisted by her PT of course!) And not to brag (but of course we will) - she skipped right over the phase of half stepping up the stairs (where you bring each foot to a step before progressing to the next) and went right to the full one foot per step that we're all so familiar with. She still has lots more room to grow; she still needs a lot of assistance using her walker and she gets tired very quickly - but the stairs were a big step forward! She also answered about 50% of the questions in neuropsychology accurately (she was able to respond to the doctor's questions about her first name, her birthday, the city she was currently in, and the city she lived in). She did think the month was October, but given that her accident was in October, this isn't unexpected.

Amanda was more on today than she has been in the past few days and spent some of her "on" moments giving Kurt a hard time (more like her normal self!). He attended speech therapy with her and when she was asked what his name was, she refused to answer. At his prompting,"It's o.k. to tell them what you call me honey..". She told her therapist he was "a son of a b-". Later, as she was eating dinner, he left the room. The princess asked Brenda where he went and on being told that he had left to get her some ice tea, Mandy shook her head at Brenda and told her that Kurt was "useless". She also told one of the nurses later that he was a "d-head". Luckily, Kurt reads all of this as progressions back to her normal self and it just makes him smile from ear to ear. (Of course, the sweet kisses she gives him and the way she constantly reaches for him and looks to him for so many things does really balance it all out.)

She is scheduled to have the trach removed tomorrow (we know she'll be thrilled with that since she spends so much time trying to pull it out!) In addition, they'll be putting a few stitches in her left eye to close the lid for a month or so in order to allow the cornea to heal. It's been slower to heal and been getting quite the work out as Mandy tries to recognize shapes, figures, and objects. The expectation is that this will keep the cornea well lubricated and rested while the body does the hard work of healing it.