It’s been a rough week around here. Tiny baby was admitted to the hospital for two nights for observation. He came home yesterday and when I went to the pediatrics floor to pick him up, his nurse, Laura, actually remembered me from when Michael and my blonde boy had been there years ago for a stay. Tiny baby is getting better; it will just take time for his bronchiolitis to go away. It was really eerie this week to realize that half of my household was hospitalized.
Michael had an endocrinologist appointment that will now require him to have blood work. Which I will take him to. By myself. Anyone ever taken a two year old for labs? Not. Fun.
Bob did see a neurologist from the Atlanticare physicians group, but I no longer have the time, nor the energy, to rant about that visit on here. He did ask the transport team to drop him off at home because he was so close. They declined.
Michael and I went to Bacharach Tuesday night for speech and after a rough start, we ended the trip with a visit to the gym for some music. He now wants a “tar” (guitar).
I checked in to the hotel tonight without fancy club level treatment. Just so you don’t think I’m living it up here, I’m still awake and not sleeping at 1 am and here is my view:
I saw Bob tonight for a couple of hours and I’ll be with him all day tomorrow for therapy. He has told me that he’s working on stairs and we worked on his homework from Ashley (speech therapy). I was impressed with the conversation we had tonight about deciding if “ball” floated or not. Bob said if it was a beach ball, yes, but a bowling ball, no. More than once he told me I was being too “teacher-y”.
The next problem page said “if butter is made from cream then…and if it’s made of something else then…” and there were tasks to do based on which statement was correct. He said, “butter is made from butter”. And then snatched my phone to google it. Ingredients in butter say “80% butter fat” but a recipe for homemade butter says “cream”. The correct answer is cream.
And then we had a conversation about “in front of” and “on top of”. He was having a hard time distinguishing the two. And got a little frustrated.
Hey Bob, Emily is “in front of” Cinderella’s castle wearing a Magee shirt! Love that girl and the time we spent with her last summer.
Bob’s reports from therapy say he was on the vector (a suspension system on a track for walking while only supporting a portion of your body weight) and I watched him use a walker to go from bed to bathroom and back again. He is improving. Little bits at a time, he is getting better.
I also received a call tonight from the spouse of a TBI patient. He has been matched with me as a support person. We are going to try to meet up tomorrow to share stories. I look forward to getting his perspective and hopefully, one day, his wife’s, so I can better understand the things that Bob will feel as we progress. He said something that resonated with me. “It’s only up from here. It’s a very slow process to move up even the littlest amount, but every day is a little bit up.”