March 11, 2006 - Late Morning

From Christine, a recap of her visit with Amanda on Thursday,"In Speech this morning, Mandy flew through the task of memorizing/repeating 5 numbers in order…then 6, then 7. Then she was given 6 numbers & was asked to repeat them back in numerical order, which she did extremely fast. Next, she moved on to a computer game in which she had 6 seconds to memorize 6 numbers & then place them all correctly in order. Mandy kept clicking past the timer (guess it was boring her) to get right to placing the numbers! Kelly didn’t even know this was possible, since nobody has ever tried it before! Kelly reset the timer down to 3 seconds, and once again, Mandy skipped past it. Then she tried to set up a new game after seeing Kelly do it only once!

In PT with Sarah, or “Smelly” as Mandy called her a couple of times, we put her feet in buckets of water, alternating cold & warm. This is to help improve circulation. We went ahead & shaved her legs during the warm water time. While this was going on, Sarah asked Mandy if she would like to go to my house some Saturday. Mandy said, “Yes, I would”. When asked what she would like to do there, she replied, “I want to cook”. Yeah!!! Me too!! Mandy then walked around CNS & onto Occupational Therapy.

Here in OC, she sorted colored chips, placing them in slots. Some had numbers & letters, while some were only plain colors. She seemed to enjoy color-coding all of the chips on the desk before placing them where they belong.

In Counseling with Kay, we played UNO again. This time Mandy let me win a couple of rounds:) Amanda insisted on playing the incorrect card even though she agreed that it didn’t match. She said, “I’m changing how the game plays”! Anybody ever seen this side of her?? When Kay played the “Draw Two” card on Mandy, she asked her if she knew what that meant…Mandy replied “It means you are stupid”.
Kay asked lots of questions while we played. Each therapist asks the same orientation questions about the date, her age, where we are & why, etc. She stated that we are all at CNS “so we can all get drunk”!

When we arrived back at the apartment, we played Go Fish & Boggle for about an hour. Her left foot was throbbing, so she relaxed on the couch with it elevated watching TV.

Throughout the day, Mandy called me by my name regularly. I don’t really remind her of whom I am any more. I just show up with smiles & hugs and she reciprocates. Last week, she said I was “her neighbor”. It’s been 2.5 years since I lived across the street from her, so we just guess that the time we spent together as neighbors stands out the most in her mind. That is when we spent time together almost daily:)

I encourage you all to visit her & play games & spend time at CNS with her. Amanda has made amazing progress! She works hard, doing almost everything asked of her and most of the time smiling that beautiful smile of hers:)"

PS A portion of the famous (or is that infamous?) snowglobe collection can be seen in the picture.