Hello, faithful family, friends, and followers. Thank you once again for stopping by and for your faithful support and prayers. The past week has been good with walks, time with friends, family, doing therapy homework, getting our Covid and Flu vaccines, and praying for all of you, who pray for all of us.
Joy continues to do well with her efforts in reading more and more. While still reading children’s stories, she is feeling more confident with the words and is able to read at a more steady pace. We continue to read from the Psalms after breakfast and are currently in Luke after supper. We thank God for the advances Joy has made in her reading and comprehension and yet still come to you, asking that you would remain faithful in prayers for further healing of Joy’s cognitive and language abilities.
Yesterday in therapy was a good example which, although difficult to hear at the time, pointed to necessary areas for growth. The speech therapist presented Joy with a picture of a dog lying on a beach. When asked, Joy was able to say the picture was of a dog, something she was not able to do when we began. Then she was asked, “What categories does a dog fit into?”
Just to explain a little, we’ve been working on expanding Joy’s language capabilities and one of the areas is “categories.” If a person is looking for a word, the more categories they can search, the more likely they are to eventually find the word they are looking for.
It is was clear, the minute the therapist said, “category,” that Joy looked confused and unsure of what was being asked. After significant prompting from the therapist, she said, “Well, it is an animal.” Which was a good answer and a correct category. Then the therapist was trying to prompt for “pet,” and listed in one column dog, cat, hamster and in another column lion, tiger, bear. Joy was again clearly confused and unsure of what was being asked. Although, as a positive aside, this is a point that would have brought copious tears before, but now only generated confused looks. Finally she said, “Well these would be in the house and those would not.” Again, a correct answer, but not the one the therapist was looking for, so she continued with several other prompts to which Joy eventually said, “they’re pets.”
Then the therapist wrote, dog, wolf, coyote and asked Joy, what “category” do these belong to. It is hard for me to sit silently by Joy’s side at times like this wanting to “help,” “coach,” wanting so bad to see my very intelligent, very well educated, and well read wife say, “well, they’re, canines.” The therapist gave hints, prompts, wrote out the first couple of letters of the word, Joy had no idea. The therapist then wrote the abbreviation, “K-9.” Still, just a confused look on Joy’s face and silence. The therapist went on to write each letter slowly, hoping Joy would eventually say, “canine,” but that was not to be. In fact, once all the letters of the word were revealed, Joy could say, “canine,” but seemed to have no idea what it really meant.
So, while we thank and praise God for his gracious mercy shown in the miraculous healing Joy has accomplished to date, as you can see, we have a long road yet to travel. And, for that road, we covet and plead for your prayers. Joy and I have such a full and remarkable life which is so much more than I ever imagined in the days and long nights after the accident. But it’s times like I describe above that bring me starkly back to a reality that Joy lives with every day, that her beautiful mind has gaps and chasms, which must be terribly hard for her especially, like these moments in therapy, where she is confronted with those gaps and chasms.
I share the above story with Joy’s full approval. She wants you all to be informed, so that you can all pray most effectively for her areas of greatest need.
In the coming week, Joy has a pre-op physical for her wrist surgery scheduled for October 24th and then we “restart” PT and OT which will initially involve assessing where do we go from here, given the strong gains Joy has already made in those areas. That’ll be a topic for next week’s post.
“Your faithful prayers, concern, and compassion are palpable as we make our way day to day and as I’ve said many, many times, words cannot express our gratitude. Please keep up those prayers, they are needed now as much as in the beginning, just in different, but very important and meaningful ways.🙏🏻