Hello family, friends, and followers. Thank you so much for your faithful and compassionate attention to Joy’s journey of healing and recovery. The last couple days have continued to be a rollercoaster of emotions for Joy, although today was definitely encouraging for her and we have a busy week ahead.
Today was our first day of outpatient Occupational Therapy and the time went wonderfully. The therapist was excellent, spent extra time with us, was very compassionate and upbeat with Joy, really tuned into our desired priorities, and helped Joy feel a sense of optimism at the possibilities, at a time when Joy’s felt so defeated on the speech and language fronts. Adding OT now brings us to 7 therapy sessions a week plus homework for each discipline, and then fitting in remaining doctor visits in our spare time. But we are thrilled to have such a wonderful resource at such a critical time in Joy’s recovery and we both could not be more pleased with each of the therapists we are working with.
This Wednesday we go back downtown to Abbott to see the neurosurgeon. Please pray particularly for continued evidence of healing to be evident on the CT that will be done, for resolution of a spot on Joy’s scalp that does not seem to “clear up,” and for several pesky internal stitches along her cranioplasty suture line that were supposed to dissolve, but did not, and don’t seem to be shedding as they should.
In my last post I mentioned, “ditching the walker,” which we did at rehab today and then we when got home, we took a stroll around our block, hand in hand, no walker required. We thank God for Joy’s physical gains and the modicum of “normalcy” that provides us.
Joy continues to knit and yesterday spent considerable time going through her many “get well” cards. While she cannot connect names with faces yet and cannot read most of the words, she felt she was able to make out some of the wishes better than before. She also continued to work on our children/grandchildren names and was able to feel encouraged in slow but real progress.
So we come to you once again to ask that you please continue to pray especially for Joy’s language center restoration, for her eyesight, and for her emotional encouragement and strength and endurance for the intense therapy schedule ahead. We cannot thank you enough for your faithfulness in traveling this road with us. The company is much appreciated and we thank God for each and every one of you.