Good evening and thank you for your ongoing support and faithful prayers for Joy and your compassion and encouragement shown our family. The last few days have been characterized by several ups and downs, usually occurring in the same day, to which we continue to seek your praise for the ups and intercession for the downs.
Let’s start with a BIG up. This morning we took a lovely drive in the country out to visit our dear friends Joe and Jan Swenson's son, Ryan, who we consider a nephew, and who is a dentist in Lichfield MN, where he performed amazing dental wizardry restoring Joy's smile as a gift to us and we could not be more grateful and thankful for his gracious act of love. All the way home Joy kept marveling about how much it meant to her and how happy it made her.
We’ve had other ups as well. We met with an orthopedic surgeon who assured us that Joy’s wrist surgery from Florida was doing well, that the surgeon there had seemed to do excellent work and that the wrist appeared to be in very good shape. He did, however, suggest that this fall we actually have the metal plate removed since over the long haul, it could cause tendon damage. We were thankful to have that information and will be following up with him in October or November. We’ve enjoyed more walks outdoors and have had, what have felt like, very constructive therapy sessions for both speech therapy and PT. Joy’s physical endurance continues to improve and balance is coming along, so much so that on our last visit to Courage Kenny Golden Valley I asked the physical therapist if we could, “just ditch the walker,” and she immediately said, “yeah, ditch the walker.” I hold Joy’s hand, so she’s not walking unattended yet, but we are glad to have ditched the walker at least in that setting.
The downs have come mostly in the form of Joy’s discouragement over what she feels is a lack of progress at any given time in our work. I mentioned before the aphasia app that was/is so encouraging to me and the speech therapist, but unfortunately, I think it has given Joy a clearer picture of the areas of deficit and also created a greater awareness for her of the “non-linearity” of this healing journey. Joy wants to see gains build on themselves and somedays we just go backwards. She can remember when she does well, but gets very discouraged when gains she knew she made a previous day or even earlier in the same day seem to evaporate. She still cannot “sound out” words or even letters without being prompted, so it makes recall and pronunciation very difficult for her.
She shared with the speech therapist how badly she feels about not remembering names of family and friends, even our own children and grandchildren. So, the therapist took pictures I provided and made a worksheet for Joy use to write out the names, Alyx, Marc, Liam, Revan, and Nova (our granddog). She can write well, but struggles to say each name. She shared with me this morning that she was practicing them in her head through the night and felt very good about it. But then after we got home from Litchfield, had a quick lunch and she took a nap, I was sitting in the room with her when suddenly she started saying, “dark, dark, dark.” I looked over at her and she had her eyes wide open starring at the ceiling. My heart immediately went to my throat and I thought, “oh, no, has she gone blind!” So I said, “what’s dark, honey, what’s dark?” And she responded, “Is that our son’s name, dark, dark?” I said, “No, honey, it’s Mmaaarrrcc” and we spent some practicing the pronunciation. But then, when we tried to do the writing and pronouncing of the names a bit later, she was unable to start any of them without prompting, got very discouraged emotionally and just wept. Similar language/reading/comprehension setbacks have brought similar discouragement and tears.
So once, again, and again I seem to say, “so, once again,” a lot, we encourage your thanks and praise for all the positive gains that have been made in Joy’s recovery journey, but, as I am hopeful the above example illustrates, we need your earnest and fervent prayers for healing of Joy’s language center at all levels and for emotional encouragement and patience for the long journey ahead.
