My theory of Jenny doing better when family and friends are around was reconfirmed as Missy and Dustin have been here for the past few days. It helps that fresh faces bring fresh ideas. Missy and Jenny shopped together all day yesterday and brought back too much stuff. They bought some games that Jenny could possibly play. One was a Mancalla game with the oval shaped marble peices. Jenny beat me 4 straight games (doing all movements on her own) and even corrected an error that I made (she called it cheating, but I called it a mistake). I quit so she could beat Missy and Zach just as bad. Not bad for a woman with hazy vision. She spelled out that it felt good to be able to interact with everyone like a “real person” and not just an observer. I feel she will quickly be able to interact more in no time. Jenny demonstrated great leg lifting on her right leg and continues to strengthen her right shoulder.

Missy and Dustin are visiting, which is always a good thing for Jenny- and the family. Since they were here for so many months just after the stroke, it has been a great baseline to judge her progress over the past 3 months. I had forgot what Jenny had been doing when they were here last, so it was fun to see how excited Missy would get to see some large improvement. Jenny felt a little proud of herself as well.

We are still waiting for some medical equiptment (such as the power wheel chair), which will make huge changes in Jenny’s life. Hopefully, it will be a nice Christmas surprise to get these things by then. Jenny has become much stronger in her right arm and it continues to improve daily.

We began our Christmas decorating this week in keeping with family tradition. Unfortunately, it has been very emotional as Jenny begins the Christmas holiday knowing that she is not able to participate fully as she would like to. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Jenny plays an active role as wife and mother (we just need to get Jenny to realize this). To a degree I think she does. There are just many reminders of what she can not do.

As for what she can do, the list grows each and every day. She has enjoyed doing electric stimulation. As for what changes it may provide- we do not know. It appears that her left leg has more movement than we once thought, which is a promising thought.

Jenny has demonstrated more improvments with producing voluntary sounds. She also is getting better at using a key board. She reads e-mail (if it is in a font large enough to see), but has only writen a couple. She wrote an e-mail to her mom two days ago that took 2 hours. It was less than a typical paragraph, but difficult as could be. She cried and wailed out of frustration but refused to quit until she was done. I have decided that we have not done as much as we use to do, so Jenny is aware that things will be stepping up. She agrees that she has not improved as much since we have been getting out more, and therfore not been home to do vigorous therapy. I am trying to include movement/therapy in all activites of her day.

Right now, Jenny is sitting next to me and working on her augmentative “speaking keyboard”. She did not know what to say, so I told her to write all the things she wanted to tell me, but never was able to. That was a huge mistake on my part. I realized I opened the flood gate of complaints that no man should ever open for his wife. “The tilt table is boring.” “The kids watch too much tv.” “I hate the therapy ball because it makes me drool and the spit gets on my hand.” It goes on from here for quite a while. She gets a kick out of watching me cringe as she hits the “SPEAK” button, and then laughs as I muster the strength to say, “good job Honey, keep typing.”

We did have another tube party to celebrate getting her last tube out. Like the trache party (where everyone had to wear a trache except Jenny) everyone had to wear tubes, except Jenny. It was a huge morale booster. She has been feeling like a burden to the family and a failure as a mom. After the party, she has been more positive about her contributions. She wants to be active in discipline, affection, and day-to-day raising of the kids. Little does she know (or want to realize), but she plays a huge role. The kids fight to see who sits next to her at dinner. We now have a schedule. Anytime she is on the ground doing therapy, she is attacked by a kid with love and hugs. If the kids are misbehaving, one ring of her bell can bring the kids to a stop more than what I do. They start defending or bring there conflcits to her right away, before and/or after she stops them with the magic bell. Even though I am a child therapist- she has taught and reinforced to me that parents over lecture their kids and there is sometimes power in her silence that allows the kids to work out their own problems (with occassional redirects by the bell). If she is not actively participating in the role of a mom, than I don’t know who is. Because of the great mom that she has always been, she does not feel like she does enough- but she never thought she ever did enough.