Recent Blessings

Psalm 10:17

You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry.

I've met some lovely people lately who fill me with hope. One, a stroke survivor, can explain what things are difficult for her and why. I marvel at her making an independent life for herself as a single mother. I've also recently met a neighbor whose husband had a brain injury ten years ago. In all that time she had not yet met a wife supporting a spouse so devastated in the prime of life and yet so unaware. I'm grateful I have the family and community support and dh is well enough that I can care for him at home. I met a brain injury survivor at the rehab program who similarly is blogging her life, which includes twin pre-schoolers. And one of the first caregivers I met at the program amazes me with her dedication and spirit. Her husband recently was recognized Texas Brain Injury Survivor of the Year.

Today dh returns from a two-day, one-night men's retreat with our church. I'm grateful to the men, dhs friends and mine, who volunteered to take dh and look after him. In return, they gleefully took dh's presence as the excuse necessary to rent a golf cart for the weekend.

Another Miraculous Story

For some reason, pregnancy seems to give license for people to share their horror stories of labor. My experience regarding brain injury has been the opposite. Rather than stories of despair or deterioration, stories of amazing recoveries abound. I've just seen one such touching story recently in an online chat.

My cousin was a sheriff's deputy who had the misfortune to have a bomb planted underneath his cruiser. It blew and he wrecked. He was in a coma for 4 months. The docs told us that he would never regain consciousness and would remain a vegetable for the rest of his life. They said there was absolutely NO brain activity and that machines were the only thing keeping him alive. They wanted his wife to sign the papers to disconnect all life support. She refused and he is alive to this day, more than 20 years later. He came out of the coma with amazingly few deficits considering. His gait is awkward, his speech is sometimes slurred and he has some memory issues, but he knows who we are and has fewer executive functioning problems than my husband [also a TBI survivor]. He can drive himself, takes an active role in his church, helps coach little league, etc. As I stated before, WE WERE TOLD THAT HE WAS COMPLETELY BRAIN DEAD!!!! He did have to undergo extensive cognitive and physical therapies to learn to walk and talk, etc, but he is by no means brain dead! Do not give up hope!!!!! Until [the] last breath, there is always hope.

Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Winter Comes

But you never know what season M thinks it is. He's been fairly accurate about dates lately, but today he told me it was September. No telling why. I see now I last wrote here in September, so sorry.

M's progress continues, but more slowly. Today, for the first time, M tapped on the car window to let me know that the door was locked. Up until now, he would just stand there until I noticed that I had not yet unlocked the door. And a few weeks ago, he completed a task (stemming grapes and putting the bag of grapes in the freezer) without my direction and while I was out of the house. M does chores much better, with more common sense.

We've been waiting for M's next step in therapy to be approved by the state's Department of Adult Rehabilitative Services. I expect he will return to a rehab program soon. But I have been told the approval process can take months. In the meanwhile, I'm doing therapy for M at home. We're following the exercises his last OT, PT and speech therapist gave him to do. I'm seeing lots of progress is M's being able to stay with a particular exercise once I direct him to start. In addition, almost every weekday M walks on a friend's treadmill (he's up to a blazing 1.7 mph for 15 minutes) and walks in the water for another half hour at the city's pool.

Please continue praying for us. God has been so good to us. Bless you all.