Into the New Year

I went up to see Sara yesterday. She was both in good shape and good spirits. Don and I spent some time with her, joking and smiling about various goofy things.

I told her that I was glad that 2007 was coming to a close. Although the whole year had been going fairly well, the way it ended (with her accident, et al...) left us on the downward side. I told her how proud I was of her, for how she had grown and lived in this past year - good job, handling her own finances, starting school, improving her relationship with her brother. I told her that I was amazed by her as a person, able to come back so far so quickly from something so dire. I told her that we would keep working to help her and that the new year meant a new start.

I told her that starting in 2008 we were going to start setting weekly goals - ones that we would decide on together and work towards each week. She answered yes. She'd continue her physical therapy, and we continue working on communication and speech therapy. If her goal was to "wake up" her brain, then this was how we were going to do it. I told her that amazing things have happened to people, and who knows if she will be one of them. It will take her working. She's ready. She's been enjoying the therapy with Rachel, and has shown improvement.


I spent most of the day with her today. We cuddled, and I talked to her. She preferred to just listen to me talk about things familiar to her outside fo the hospital. And I rubbed lotion into her hands and feet, then gave her a whole body rub. She was in heaven. Then we curled up on her bed and took a nap. Well, until MY legs started to cramp. Then I got up and futzed around her room and cleaned until she started grinding her teeth at me. Taking my cue, I told her that she should go back to sleep and I was going to venture home, to which she answered yes.

You can see so much expression in her face now. Her forehead, cheeks, lips and chin are all moving, expressing. OH...and when they suctioned her this afternoon...she localized to it, and to painful stimuli. That is significant, as she has been unable to localize to pain since her stroke.

There are two postures for reaction, localization and decerebration. Localization is you ball up your fist and pull your arms in. Decerebration is you extend away from the pain, pushing arms and legs out. And then there is no reaction at all - where stimuli yields no reaction at all. During her stroke, she stopped localizing and became decerebrate - and that showed it was damaging her brain stem. By the time they took her down to surgery at Davis, she flexed completely away. This is what lead doctors to believe that her brain stem was totally gone.

Well, now she's localizing, after two months of no reaction at all. And THAT is significant. I told her that I was thrilled - I hadn't been looking for any changes. Just letting her cruise and rest - but her brainstem is showing us that stuff is going on the right direction inside her brain. I'll take it.

Welcome to 2008. Welcome to uncharted territory and unknown possibilities for Sara, and for us all.