One Month In

It's hard to believe this whole thing started a month ago. This past 30 days has been a blur and things that I once thought were so important have completely fallen aside. I often have no idea what day of the week it is and the only reason I know the date is because the nurse writes it on Jake's whiteboard in his room each morning.

Looking back, Jake has made amazing progress this first week of rehab, he's been working so hard.

• When we moved up to the rehab floor last Friday, he was barely speaking above a whisper and now he's fully conversational and actually pretty witty at times. His volume is getting much closer to normal but still lacks inflection.
• He's gone from his sole source of nutrition being a feeding tube, to adding pureed foods, now transitioned to soft foods and the feeding tube is gone.
• Jake's head and trunk control continue to improve each day. Earlier in the week it took both therapists to help support his back and neck while sitting. Today, he needed very little support while sitting and when we go for walks in his wheelchair, I no longer worry about making sure my hand is on the side of his head in case he should bobble.
• He is starting to feed himself and take care of some of his basic needs like teeth brushing and he even washed most of his own hair in the bath today. We just have to be really careful with the eating and drinking, as when he's feeding himself, he can't get things into his mouth quick enough and we don't want him choking.
• Both eyes are now wide open instead of the left being partially open and the right being barely open.
• His agitation and constant busyness on the right side have really mellowed.
• His pre-aneurysm memory is absolutely amazing.

Unfortunately, he is still not sleeping great, spends a good portion of the day fixated on things and is becoming much more aware of the lack of movement on his left side. He said to me tonight, "Mom, I just want to drum again and I can't even hold my drumstick." He knows if he wants to roll over onto his right side, he either needs help or has to pull his left leg over. All I can do it tell him to use this as motivation when he doesn't want to go to therapy or thinks it's too hard. Inside my heart is breaking that he has to go through this.

We've also discovered a few cognitive issues I honestly had not even thought might be an issue. Most are due to the left side deficiencies he has at the moment which it appears are extending to his vision. For example, we were playing Connect Four and his checkers were set off to his left side and he didn't think he had any to play with. Today, he was playing a memory matching game and didn't turn over any of the cards on the left side of the table until they were pointed out to him. The speech therapist had him read aloud and he would start in the center of the page (left to right center, not top to bottom) and skip all the words on the left. We're told this is all part of re-training the brain and "normal" for his type of injury, it will just take time to come back. As much as he loves to read, that was the hardest one for me to witness.

Specific Prayer Requests:
1. Continued healing of Jake's brain to get him past the fixation phase.
2. Improved sleep patterns for Jake
3 Strength and determination for Jake as he works through rehab