Thursday morning

Since yesterday was a little scary, I thought I'd post this morning to let you know Matt is doing fine after his seizure. They told me he just needed to sleep, which he did all day and all night. This morning he was bright eyed and happy to see us. He'd gotten a shower this morning and was in regular clothes and working with his speech therapist when we came in. Then the occupational therapist came and got him out of bed into his chair. At first he didn't want to, but then he said okay, 5 minutes. She said how about 30? And he said, okay, 40 minutes. Everyone was happy with the deal and Matt worked really hard on trying to move his right arm for awhile. Then he got really fatigued and they took his blood pressure and it was quite low so they got him back into bed. He is on medication to lower his blood pressure right now (which is quite common for a brain injury) but Matt has always had a naturally low blood pressure, so he's having a tough time being upright. They're going to monitor him closely the next few days and will maybe be able to get him off that medication soon.

Brain science is a fascinating thing and we are all learning so much very quickly. This morning I watched Matt work with his speech therapist on identifying common objects. She started with 10 pictures of things like bowl, table, bicycle, etc. Some of them Matt knew right away, without thinking, and others required quite the discussion and hints for him to properly identify. Then she put the cards aside and asked him to remember what he'd seen and he recalled all the things that had required more thinking, and couldn't remember any of the ones he'd identified right away. I don't know if this really means anything, but I thought it was very interesting. Although, mom and I said later we couldn't remember the 10 pictures, either, so its a good thing nobody asked us.