Wednesday morning

Another quick week and things are going well - Matt is working so hard and is super busy with all his homework. He started OT last Friday and he really likes this therapist, too. She said it's good that he has some feeling in his shoulder - it's something to work with and a place to start. He's still struggling with a lot of tone in his hand, which is when the muscles are uncontrollably tense all the time. He has a hard splint that he spends 6-8 hours a day in to stretch out his fingers and his therapist says she can get his hand to relax more than before. Again, a good place to start.

Reading is slowly coming along - it's still really difficult to read full sentences, but he's getting through more of the list each day. Yesterday he asked his ST to give him longer sentences to try and she was thrilled. I've noticed him struggling with the desire to say more lately and the inability to find all the words he wants. Last night he really wanted to ID the birds we heard during dinner and it was driving him crazy not to know the names. We grabbed the field guides and he pointed them all out - if only we had field guides for everything!

I did drive him out to the woods this weekend and we wandered around a bit looking at wildflowers which seemed to make him quite happy. Now as he wanders further from the house he sees more of the work he wants to be doing and it's quite a struggle. Most of the time, he keeps up a pretty good sense of humor and says "add it to your list!" and shakes his cane at me. He's managed to remember the word 'supervisor' and is pretty good at it.