Hello and thank you for your continued faithful interest, concern, and ongoing prayers for Joy and our family. Since my last post we’ve continued therapy at Courage Kenny, kept up with our therapy homework, enjoyed several special times with friends, relished our outdoor walks, baked the first batch of famous Grandma muffins since returning home, spent extra time with our grandson Revan, and experienced the inevitable gains and setbacks in this nonlinear recovery journey we are on. I took some time yesterday to read through early posts and be reminded of just how far we have come, which we have, but in this new era of much slower progress, and more frequent although more minor setbacks, its sometimes hard to “see the forest for the trees.”
Joy has continued to excel physically with more endurance. Our 1.2 mile walk around the lake is pretty routine now except on days that have been very active otherwise. Eyesight has shown some gains in the vertical diplopia, but the right side field of vision cut in both eyes was unfortunately confirmed more yesterday. I felt I have seen Joy notice things to her right side that led me to hope the vision cut was lessoning, however, as she described her vision to me yesterday with some very specific examples, it is clear there is a significant right cut, which is related to the brain injury, not the mechanics of her eyes themselves, needing prayers for the miraculous, because treatment or therapy won’t impact it.
Fortunately, although with some setbacks, we’ve seen gains with Joy’s word recognition in sight, writing, and speech. Our current ST homework is to create a simple sentence using a chosen verb and then fill in the who, what, where, when and why. Saturday morning, Joy really excelled and felt very good about the exercise, however, yesterday afternoon, the process was a struggle from the start and as a result was quite discouraging for Joy. As I’ve mentioned previously, Joy remembers her “successes” and then gets discouraged when she is unable to repeat them. As an example, yesterday the sentence included the word, “birds.” It took a significant amount of time and prompting for Joy to get each individual letter of the word written and then when she went to say it, she couldn’t sound the “s,” it kept coming out as “st.” So we do our normal routine of, “watch my mouth, “its ‘sssss,’ ‘birds,’” to which Joy responds, “birdst.” After several attempts at birds and other words, we put it aside to try again today, but that’s one small example of Joy’s apraxia. Of course the fact that Joy is speaking at all, is writing at all, and is reading at all, are all miracles beyond description, hence the need to sometimes step back and be able to see the forest and stop looking for the moment at the trees.
This afternoon we had a follow up appointment scheduled long before the accident for Joy’s breast cancer recheck. Joy was diagnosed in the fall of 2022 with a small estrogen positive cancer in the right breast which was removed with a lumpectomy followed by radiation. It struck me how minor a cancer follow up recheck felt now compared to everything else Joy has been and is going through. Thankfully the recheck went well and her next appointment is scheduled in six months.
Coming back, if I might, to “seeing the forest,” the bigger picture, I was reading Henri Nouwen this morning and was reminded of my post on 3/24, Palm Sunday, when I reflected on the meaning-making of suffering. Nouwen writes, “I realized that healing begins with our taking our pain out of its diabolic isolation and seeing that whatever we suffer, we suffer it in communion with all of humanity, and yes, all of creation. In so doing, we become participants in the great battle against the powers of darkness. Our little lives participate in something larger… Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering—for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.” A larger hope… I like that.
So again, we thank you, thank you, thank you for standing by us. In your continued prayers for Joy, please earnestly seek healing for her aphasia and apraxia, her eyesight, especially the right field of vision cut, and for her emotional encouragement in her long haul recovery. We need you all and are so blessed to have you with us on the journey.
