September 7, 2012 From Sarah

My mom had an early start to a packed full day, and she rocked every single thing.  We were constantly telling her how proud of her we were, and it was especially nice to have such a great day following the roughness of yesterday.  Eight AM brought on the dreaded treadmill, but she handled it wonderfully - she wasn't exactly smiling, but I don't think I heard a single countdown and there was little to no complaining.  My mom explained later to John that she didn't feel like she was really walking on the treadmill because there were so many people helping her.  This is true, as therapists assist her with her posture, getting her feet high enough off the ground, and to land her feet on the ground evenly.  After we assured her that she was still doing a ton of good and hard work though, she conceded and said, "Yeah I must have been doing something because I was sweating like crazy."  The rest of the day brought a long list of achievements.  James, her OT, literally used the word "amazing" to describe her work today, and he doesn't use words like that liberally.  Even my mom's performance in memory class today was a huge success.  

One of our daily battles with my mom is her appetite.  I don't think any of us thought we'd see the day that my mom didn't want to eat, and she will be the first to tell you that her appetite was the icing on the cake for my dad when they first met.  Lately, however, my mom's appetite has really suffered.  We push her hard to eat because we all want to get rid of her PEG - my mom more than anyone.  We bribe and push her, and we even run through the list of consequences for continuing to need tube feedings, but sometimes there is little we can do to convince her.  Her meals today suffered pretty badly until dinner, when I was finally able to coax her into putting down a good meal.  She got a lot of kisses and high fives for that.

As usual, my mom is a bit of a social butterfly around the hospital.  She knows all of the nurses and remembers everything about their kids.  With all of this interaction, there has been a fair amount of favoritism that's developed.  She definitely has her nurses ranked when it comes to her nighttime shower (which occurs every other night), and she makes those preferences very well known....!  We've been working on those "foot in mouth" moments and on whispering, but after all of this opinion sharing, my mom was able to sweet talk one of her favorite nurses into giving her a shower tonight (even though it was an off night).  She knew she was being spoiled.  We've learned a lot about brain injuries just by watching some of the other patients on the floor.  In the past few days, we've seen a patient with pretty much the opposite abilities as my mom - this patient is physically very strong and has recently become able to walk unassisted.  He is still cognitively very ill, however, and he has no idea what he's doing half the time.  It's very scary to see and can be extremely disruptive for everyone around.  Therefore, while I find my mom to be extremely cute and pleasant, I don't think it's very difficult for her to rank high with the nurses these days!

My mom's memory improves every single day, and today was no exception.  She asked John to tell her about his weekend out-of-state last weekend, and when he began repeating some of his stories to her from Monday, she said, "yeah, you told us that already."  It's so cool to see her go from asking us what she did earlier the same day, to being bored with our stories from nearly a week ago.  The question of where we will go after TIRR is fast approaching and much discussion has/is continuing to take place.  We have had to make many decisions up until this point without my mom, but this is the first big decision that we have been able to get her input on.  It's really exciting to see that from her, because her input has always been a huge factor for me.  I don't know what I would do without it.