Hello and thank you again for following with us and for your prayers and compassionate support for Joy’s healing and recovery. This week has been similar to last week as we continued therapy at Golden Valley Courage Kenny and at home with our therapy homework. Joy had a wonderful coffee outing with a friend and then a visit from another, both of which she enjoyed immensely. Joy’s mood has been generally better, there are ups and downs, but the downs have been less severe and of short duration.
Joy continues to do well physically and we so appreciate the enthusiastic direction and encouragement Joy receives from our PT and OT therapists. We have updated our walk route to include the “garden loop” which upped the distance to 1.5 miles.
Today we traveled back downtown for a follow up with the Physical Medicine Rehabilitation physician who oversaw Joy’s care during inpatient rehab. He was clearly pleased with Joy’s amazing progress and basically encouraged us to “keep doing what we are doing.” On another physician note, we’d appreciate prayers for a dermatology appointment we have set for Monday regarding a spot on Joy’s head near the cranioplasty incision which we scheduled at the encouragement of the neurosurgeon’s nurse practitioner. Pray for wisdom for the physician and plan to resolve whatever it is.
Joy is excited and looking forward to an opportunity to visit with her 96 y/o mother, Ruth, on Saturday, June 22nd. Joy’s brother Joel from OK, will be visiting Ruth in Monona, IA with his family and so we made plans to meet in between in Preston, MN for the afternoon. We are also excited to have Alyx join us for the outing and look forward to Joy and Ruth being able to have this in-person time together which both will treasure.
Our prayer requests continue to be healing of Joy’s aphasia, apraxia, and vision along with emotional encouragement for the long slow journey we find ourselves on. A prime example of the continued challenges occurred today while we were working on the Tactus Aphasia app. Joy was to select from a set of six pictures based on a spoken word. One of the words was “cow,” Joy grew up on a dairy farm, the cow pictured, was a Holstein cow like she grew up with, it was the only animal in the set of pictures, she listened to the word three times before making her selection, and then selected the picture of a t-shirt. Fortunately, Joy did not become overly discouraged with the exercise today, but as I have in the past with examples such as this, I urge you to please continue your prayers for Joy’s cognitive/language deficits.
We so appreciate everyone who takes their valuable time to follow our story and pray for Joy’s healing and recovery. You are all a very real part of the miracle we are experiencing. We can’t thank you enough.
