December 30, 2005 - Friday

We're having problems with pics again, so we're going to post without a pics. It's a long one though, so it's just as well that the pics aren't working. It was an amazing day in Amanda-land. We'll start with the biggest news first. Around mid-afternoon, Amanda told Brenda and Kurt that she needed to use the restroom. As Kurt went to prepare the bathroom for her, Brenda began preparing her wheelchair. While Brenda was preparing her wheelchair, Amanda put her hands on her wheelchair and pulled herself to a standing position and stood there using Brenda for balance(despite Brenda asking her to wait for Kurt!). The nurse came over and helped to support her and continuing to use Brenda for balance, Amanda slowly walked herself the 20 feet from her bed to the bathroom! As they rounded the corner, Brenda told Kurt not to come out of the bathroom too fast because there was a surprise waiting for him. As he stepped out of the bathroom, he saw the amazing sight of his wife walking towards him. He grinned from ear to ear. Later, when we called Ron to share the experience with him, Amanda was able to recall her amazing feat and repeat it back to Ron in response to his questions (a coherent present-moment conversation!). Tears of joy!

If that weren't enough, we have lots of other Amandisms from the day to share. Her morning was kind of sleepy (she kept falling asleep in her neuro psychology group session), but she really perked up in the afternoon. Good thing Kurt got Baylor to change more of her therapy sessions to the afternoon (when she's been more alert) because she really showed them what she was made of today.

The first Amandism needs some background. There are 4 beds in her room. When she arrived there was a 20ish guy there named Matt. Yesterday morning, they moved him to another room, but no one thought to tell Amanda where he was going (being with her is pretty intense, you forget these things sometimes). When she was wheeled to group therapy session yesterday morning (which Matt attends), Kurt put her beside Matt and said,"I'm going to put you right next Matt". She was pretty sleepy and didn't comment on it. Later at lunch, she was facing his empty bed and looking at it. She turned to Brenda and said,"He didn't die?". It took Brenda a minute to put all the pieces together and realize that Amanda had thought Matt had left because he had died (remember she was in an ICU for about 6 weeks and saw more than we ever did because we weren't told when someone didn't make it and we have no way of knowing what she heard or saw during that time). Because she thought he had died, Amanda must have been surprised to see Matt in group therapy. It was a pretty complex and connected sequence of connections for our girl to make! Brenda assured her that "No, baby. Matt just graduated to his own room and when you can answer the questions like him, you'll graduate too." Kurt also reassured her, "No one here is going to die. Everyone is here to get better." She must have been thinking about this a lot because 30 minutes later, as she was eating her lunch, the hospital staff brought a new woman into the room. The new woman was much like Amanda 3 weeks ago - still pretty comatose. They began orienting the woman to the room (explaining to her where she was, what they were there to do, etc). Mandy paused her eating, looked at us, gestured behind her to the bed and told us,"We have to encourage her." That's our girl.

The rest of the Amandisms are shorter but there are a lot of them. Kurt was flipping through her CD case looking for some music and paused on the Elton John CD. Amanda (who works really hard to try and read all the words she sees) said "Elton John". Kurt asked her,"Do you want to listen to Elton John?". She shook her head,"No, I want to listen to my brother." He played her the guitar and sang to her every day he was here and she loved it. Her music retention is pretty amazing.

She did very well in all of her afternoon therapies (one on one neuro where she had to pick out the differences between pictures, speech where she was asked to identify items from pictures, identify people in the room and repeat phrases, and OT which she doesn't care for unless it's in the kitchen, where she easily took to the hand bicycle). However, she had busy hands all day. It took every moment of our attention and sometimes all of our strength to pull her hands away from her the bandages on her throat (where the trach was removed) and her eye. She shocked and surprised the speech therapist when she spontaneously and sternly said, "Brenda!" after Brenda grabbed her hand from the throat bandage once again during therapy. (Amanda had refused to introduce Brenda to the speech therapist earlier. Sometimes she can be a stubborn little mule. She does things in her own good time.) Later, back in her room, when Brenda reached across her and grabbed her hand again away from her eye bandage, Amanda turned to her and said,"Don't be nasty". Brenda said,"I'm not being nasty baby, but I'm not going to let you hurt yourself" and Amanda replied,"It's Kurt's fault". When Brenda asked why that was, Amanda said,"He doesn't love me". LOL She's returning to her old self. [Lest you think we're being mean re: the bandages. The only other alternative is to restrain her hands, which we don't want to do. We give her freedom of movement when we're there with her and just watch her carefully to make sure she doesn't pick at her bandages or tubes. But it's quite the job as she is the master of distraction. She will hold your hand with one hand and reach with the other hoping that you don't notice it. Even her therapists have a hard time keeping up with it.]

She's working really hard and we're all so amazingly proud of her!