Swim Therapy

Swimming!  One of the things Mom used to love to do as a kid.  In preparation for today I have been asking her if she'd like to go swimming sometime and each time she seemed pretty interested.  So after we made plans I was confident that it would be a successful adventure.

David was kind enough to stay home from work today to help me out and I think he enjoyed the break too.  The weather was great at 10am, and the water was 80 degrees...if not warmer.  

As expected Mom mentioned being too cold when getting deeper and deeper in the water, but once she was all the way in she was fine.  I was expecting her to be nervous and just ask to get out of the water, but instead she did a lot of laughing and seemed to really enjoy herself.

Her walking was the same in the water...no improvement.  We tried to get her to float, or to kick her feet out behind herself, or try to "stand" "on her knees so that the water would come up over her shoulders so she wouldn't have to stand all the way up...she attempted each, but we didn't have much success.

All in all, it was pretty fun.  Mom enjoyed sitting outside the pool in the nice weather after we swam too.  We'll be doing this again!

Wii Therapy

There is all kinds of therapy you can do when you really think about it.  David thought of this one.

We played the Wii with Mom after her hip injury, but playing with a brain injury brings a whole new dynamic to the game.  We played Big Brain Academy which I really thought she wasn't ready for...BUT she did pretty well.  One of her best areas was math, and that was a big surprise from this art teacher.

From her point of view:

Another Year

58 years old!

One year and 6 days ago Mom had her traumatic-brain-injury-causing car accident.  Today we were glad to celebrate her birthday.  She was happy too, but mostly because she had a pretty delicious birthday cake sitting in front of her!

Mom was excited to get flowers from her good friend from Rochester, Josie!

Midnight Bliss Cake close-up!  YUM!

Bowling!

On Wednesday we were invited to go bowling with the Kings.  It was fun!  

We didn't know how difficult it might be because of Mom being in her wheelchair most of the time, but the King's are pros at finding ways to do things that most people would think impossible.  Below, Emily demonstrates how to use the ramp to bowl instead of having to throw the ball.

Then Mom tried it with David cheering her on!  She did very well and was able to play for half of the game before getting tired...

...and cold!  Even with all those blankets she was done for the day.  But that was ok because David and I got to finish bowling for everyone.

We had a good time and have already made plans to go back.  Grandma may even come next time!

Gift Therapy

Gift Therapy!  Bet you've never heard of this!  Well, that's because it's not actually real...

Mom got a gift in the mail today from her sisters-in-law.  The gift was from "The Nut House."   Now, we all know that this could imply different meanings, but after a moment of thinking it through we decided that their intentions were for her to have a delicious assortment of nuts and not imply that she's gone nuts!  ...although we thought the other option pretty funny.

The nuts came with packing peanuts too!  ...so clever.

Finally got it out of the box!

We decided to make Mom and honorary member of The Nut House.

They are delicious!  And really big!  I've never seen cashews as large as these.

Gift Therapy will continue this Thursday because it's Mom's birthday!

Harry Therapy

During Mom's visit this weekend we were trying to think of things we could do.

  

We asked Mom what kinds of things she liked to do now, instead of drawing (since she doesn't like the way she draws now).  She came up with a few ideas, one of them being reading.  Interesting... since she didn't like to read much before.  So we tried it!

David went to get a Harry Potter book and Mom started reading!

  

She needed a little help ever now and then with pronouncing words like "Dursley" and "Privet" but she did pretty well.  After reading the first page we stopped her and asked her some questions to see if she was remembering what she read.  I think reading will be a good thing for us to do, although Harry Potter might be too long of a story for her.  We need a good book of short stories, for adults.

I was also thinking of something like a needlepoint project...but it would have to be one with large holes and a big dull needle.  Anybody know about anything about something like that?

At An Angle

This past Sunday we went to visit Mom  at Restore.  We sat on the front porch for a while because the weather was beautiful.  I pulled out my camera and handed it to Mom just to see if she would want to use it.  She was excited to take pictures of David in his orange shirt.  But, she didn't make much of an effort to keep the camera straight.  Instead, almost every picture was at an angle.  At least she got all of him within the frame.

  

We'll have to work on photography when she comes home. Until then, we'll just have pictures at an angle.

Home Visit April 27th

Mom has started a weekly home visit schedule with the people taking care of her at Restore.  They want her to start getting used to doing activities at home with me so that when she comes back home she won't refuse to do things like she did before.  Hopefully this plan will work nicely so her transition home doesn't cost her any progress time.

This week she used her brand new shower for the first time, had lunch, planted some flowers, and then we looked at some picture albums.  Here is a picture of the flowers she helped with:

It was too cold outside to do this activity outside, but maybe next week she can at least go outside and water them.  

When we looked at the picture albums we went through a lot of old pictures.  She remembered A LOT of the people in the pictures, and thanks to Grandma Gert we cold confirm that she was remembering correctly.  It was neat.  She also remembered that Dad told her he was having the house painted (from the Sunday before - 3 days!) but couldn't remember that she took a shower in her new shower about an hour before.  Strange how she remembers some things easier than others.