Busy days again

Sherry is back at it and busy again. Yesterday she paid a visit to Dona at her tax business. She got to see many people that she has not seen in quite some time and it made her very happy. Then it was off for a visit to her old job at the courthouse. Again, she saw many of her former co-workers. According to Jody, she followed Renee around the courthouse, not needing to be led by the arm as in past visits. She spent a great deal of time this evening telling me what she wanted me to post tonight. It is very important to her that everyone who I just just mentioned know that they are a big part of what keeps her going and moving forward. When she gets down, she thinks of her friends at the courthouse and how she still hopes to return to work there some day. She was in tears as she was telling about how hearing from Eric on the phone and on this blog, visiting with Sean most every Friday lifts her up. She loves seeing "the zoo" when they come over. She wanted me to be sure to once again, thank all of her therapists that are so important to her and Jody as well, who has done so much for her. Our girls also try to help in their own way, although we are struggling a bit in that area at the present time. So, thank you to everyone. Sherry's recovery is a total team effort and there are those of you out there who are helping and probably don't even know it.

Sherry also remains very busy at home, constantly cleaning and rearranging things. She actually has the kitchen and dining room area looking the best it has looked in quite some time. She is just getting around so much better. I am really pushing her a bit more to do little things that we know she can do. Things like putting the mouthwash in a glass by herself, putting lotion on her arms by herself. She is working hard most every morning on getting herself dressed. This has proved to be a tough task, but she is making headway as of late. It has been very difficult for me to watch her struggle with this and get frustrated, so I have tended to do it for her and not let her fight it out with herself. So, she is trying hard to re-learn this skill. When you stop and think about it, getting dressed is one of the most complicated skills we use, it uses all of our motor skills, vision everything. It is hard for Sherry but we know it is a big part of getting better.

All of Sherry's therapists have given very good progress reports in the last week or so. I speech therapy, she continues to work on memory skills and multi-tasking with Kirsten. Betty, her vision therapist has her balancing on a big rubber ball, and doing work on her hands and knees. It wasn't that long ago that we were happy she could just get up and down from her chair without help, so there has been much progress. We still have a ways to go, but Sherry is up to it and I am more confidant than ever she will get to where she wants to be.

Enough for now,

I love my wife.....tomorrow we move forward,

Dean

Good weekend

We all had a very good weekend. Sherry really seems to be back on track. She drove everyone crazy (well, sort of anyway) over the last few days with her constant cleaning up of the house. She does her best, but still needs supervision to be safe. So, I would be helping Brittney with her school work and Sherry would get up and head off to the bathroom or something and I would have to stop what I was doing and follow her to make sure she was safe. Most of the weekend I didn't know if I was coming or going. Every now and again, Sherry would sense a little frustration on my part, she would wrap her arms around me and say either " but you got to love me," or "at least I'm here this year to drive you nuts" That of course put a huge smile on my face and we would move on.

We are hoping that the bad weather has finally passed. It played hell with our schedule, making it more difficult to get Sherry to therapy appointments etc. If the weather improves, we are planning on expanding Sherry's therapy opportunities. We would like to get her into a special swimming pool program for people who have suffered strokes. Even though she did not have a stroke, we all think it would still be very beneficial for her. We are also going to start to look for some kind of vocational program, where Sherry would have the chance to work on more job related skills and inter-personal skills. In the mean time, she will continue with her usual therapies and just continue to push forward. As she would say, "it's the only thing allowed."

I also wanted to take a moment and wish our grandson Ethan a very happy birthday. He turned 4 on the January 9th and also to Kelly who had a birthday on the 13th. I apologize for being very late about this. I am now in charge of things like this and I can barely remember my own birthday. Hopefully one day in the future, Sherry will be back in charge and we will be more timely. Thanks you for the response to one of the last posts Eric, it really does make a difference in your mothers life.

enough for now,

I love my wife......tomorrow we move forward...it's the only thing allowed afterall

Dean

Foward again....

Sherry continues to recover from from the UTI and the resulting seizure activity. She has the use of her right arm and hand back and she is back on track with her therapy. I do still notice that she is having a harder time with her language. She struggles to retrieve the right words and often gets them jumbled (sometimes with a humorous result.) I have seen this before, months ago when she had seizures quite often. Her language would improve again over time, I hope this will be the case now as well. I'm sure it will be.

Sherry and I went out to dinner tonight. We have always enjoyed Outback and my mother gave us a gift card for Christmas, so with my sisters help, we used it tonight. Kim took the girls and is keeping them overnight so we could have a nice dinner alone. She also gave us a ride to and from Outback, which was of course a great help. We also ate at Outback on our anniversary in August and spent more in taxi fare back and forth than we did on our meals. So, thank you Kim, we appreciate it very much.

enough for now,

I love my wife....tomorrow we move forward

Dean

Birthdays....

Happy birthday Joy and Curtis!

Just a short post to wish a belated happy birthday to Sherry's step father Curtis and to her mother Joy.

Improvement

Today was a good day, quiet, but good. Sherry continued to show improvement in the use and coordination of her right hand and arm. She was able to use it for several different things such as toileting, eating and drinking etc. It is beginning to look as if the doctor has it right, that this was the result of seizures and would eventually resolve itself with a little time. Sherry says she is not all the way back yet, but feels better about things tonight, as do I. She has one more "day off" before getting back to therapy on Tuesday. Hopefully by then, she will be back to her old self and ready to move forward again.

enough for now,
I love my wife....tomorrow we move forward

Dean

Bump in the road....

Friday Sherry became worse and had Jody and I both pretty worried. Not only was she unable to use her right arm and hand at all, she began to slur her speech and her right hand began to twitch uncontrollably. We got ahold of the neurologist on call at 8 in the morning and he determined that Sherry has probably been experiencing a "flurry of seizure activity" over the last several days. He prescribed an additional anti-seizure medication and ordered blood and urine tests. The urine test later showed that Sherry has a urinary tract infection. We were told that this could actually trigger these seizures. Sherry has not had any seizures for well over three months, maybe longer (at least none that we are aware of). We could not figure out why she was having them now, but it was probably the infection. The doctor wanted Sherry to take a very large dose of the additional meds in a short amount of time. Later, we started her on anti-biotics to combat the infection. She started to show some improvement shortly after starting the new meds. By the time I got home from work, she was no longer slurring her words, and her hand had pretty much stopped twitching. She still cannot really use her right arm and hand, but the doctor said that should come back over the next few days. So, we are guardedly hopeful, just hoping the doctor has this right. He sounded very confident to me over the phone, so we are waiting and watching. Sherry is just taking it very easy this weekend and says she feels like things are getting better.

We have not hit a bump in the road like this for quite some time. If things settle down and she can begin to use her arm and hand again soon, this will have just been a short interruption on her road of recovery. If however, she cannot then this will have become a real setback as we will have to focus her therapy on getting it back. Only time will tell. I will keep you all posted.

Enough for now,

I love my wife....tomorrow we move forward,

Dean

busy times

Just a short post until this weekend when I promise to get everyone totally caught up on life during the holidays. I promised Sherry that I would post tonight and that I would include a picture of her (from the old days) on a motorcycle. That I will do this weekend. But I wanted to let people know that things have gone pretty well over the last few weeks. However, two nights ago we had some kind of "episode" where Sherry again became somewhat disoriented, having trouble navigating around the house and most troubling of all (because it is new) developed difficulty using her right arm and hand. This seems to come and go, sometimes she can do things that she is accustomed to doing and sometimes she cannot. This is frustrating because it has been so long since we have had anything like this happen. Things had been moving along pretty good and this development is a bit of a disappointment. Sherry is dealing with it pretty well, although she is concerned about it as we all are. We saw Dr. Mundall, her neurologist today (a scheduled appt.) and he is not sure what happened. Overall, he is very happy with Sherry's progress but of course is concerned about the latest developments. He wants to just give things a little time and see what happens. Hopefully things will resolve over time, as they always have in the past. I will keep you all posted.

Sherry also had her vision therapy "mid-way" progress appt. today. The news was all very good and I will tell you more about it over the weekend, I promise. I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long, the holidays have been so busy. I know there are a few of you out there who really do check to see how she is doing, I will try to be better about posting a bit more often. As always, I encourage you to make a comment to this post or send Sherry an email at deanojack13@comcast.net and give her some words of encourgement. It is always appreciated, especially when things get a little rough.

Happy new year everyone, enough for now

I love my wife....tomorrow we move forward,

Dean