Jean and Dad!

Today was Jean's day to drive Dad to his therapy appointments. He was scheduled for physical and speech therapy today. Since I just told you about physical therapy, I'll tell you now about speech therapy! Jean watched and took notes! Dad's speech therapist has been doing that for 40 years! So she's blessing us with lots of experience in her field! She had Dad do quite a few different "exercises." For example, she had him do a puzzle of the alphabet. He got most of the letters correct, but missed one small area. She told Jean that, each time he does the puzzle, he misses a small area and it's not always the same area. She gave Dad a quiz that first made a statement like, "The boy lost his dog." The other side of the sheet asks, "What did the boy lose?" and Dad is supposed to write the answer on a line. He could answer the simpler questions. He could even write what I would consider a harder word, "Chicago," as one of the answers. But, later, when she asked him the same question, he missed Chicago. She said that is a symptom of Dad's aphasia. I looked up aphasia for you...according to Wikipedia, it is a language disorder in which there is impairment of any language modality. Depending on the area and extent of brain damage (in this case, from the stroke), someone suffering with aphasia may be able to speak but not write, or vice versa, or display any of a wide variety of other deficiencies in language comprehension and production, such as being able to sing but not speak. In Dad's case, it affects his speech, his reading comprehension and his ability to take a thought and transfer it to paper They have tested Dad's eyesight and found that he has no peripheral vision in his right eye. It makes me wonder if he can hear with his left ear. If you approach him from the right side, often times he does not acknowledge you at all. This explains why! The therapist sent Dad home with a hand mirror and exercises. We're supposed to have him look in the mirror and watch himself saying ooooo's, ahhhs, ohhhhs as well as have him smile, pucker his lips, etc. That's something that Jean and I can do with Dad because Mom's days just get away from her too quickly.

Mom and Dad are due here tomorrow morning at 8:00 so we can head to the airport! As I told you earlier, we will be north of Steamboat Springs Thursday nght through Sunday morning! The low this morning in Steamboat was 44, but we are about 1000 feet higher than that!!! YEEHAW!!! We girls hope to get in a LOT of R & R and the guys will play some golf, tell some "stories" and, you know, do guy stuff!!! We're all really excited about going! I can't wait to tell you all about it!!!

Jerry will be at Mom and Dad's Monday to help her unpack and do laundry from the trip. I go back out there Wednesday because Dad has therapy in the morning and acupuncture in the afternoon, so Mom can do other things and not have to be gone most of the day. So, until next week, may God keep us all safe and healthy! Amen! Love, Sandi