Math drills

Progress: only missed 4

Recovery Progress

Recovery is still at a mind numbing, slow and frustrating pace.

Speech: It took me 15 minutes to write the alphabet with a pencil today. The only letters I forgot how to write are a lower case "f" and "k". I guess that is progress. The little one (Hayden) is such a help when it comes to my nightly speech therapy homework.

Physical: The pain in my legs has been absolutely horrible - even just standing straight takes monumental effort. Two weeks of laying in bed caused the muscles in my legs to atrophy. 

I have a slight lean to the right side so I'm supposed to try and correct that which isn't as easy as it sounds. I'm already concentrating really hard on just walking and now I need to work on fixing the right side drift.

Thankfully, the leg pain has somewhat subsided the last two days and I have been able to do some light stretching and walking. It was a nice day out and I made my first "unsupervised" walk around the block! And, I walked around the track at Lincoln High School and went up and down the bleachers.

Spending time with the puppy has been good therapy too.

Occupational therapy starts next week.

I've been slowly tapering off the steroid that helps with brain swelling. I'm so glad I only have four more days on it. I cannot stop eating. Everyone laughs at me when I get to my meal. But, I can't control it.  It's Crazy!

Funny? Or scary?

Saw this sign at the entrance of the Rehabilitation Center today. 
Seeing how stressed and discouraged Josh feels after speech therapy, I guess I can see the need for the sign.

Pain Meds Fiasco

Just make sure that you get plenty of pain medicines when they release you from the hospital. Trying to get my prescription refilled turned into a total fiasco.

Today I ran out of pain pills. Well. yesterday. When Fay went to refill the prescription, it wasn't on the narcotic tag. She had driven to Stanford on Monday to get a new RX so that I would not run out. But, last night at the pharmacy, she was told that it was not on the legal prescription paper used for narcotics. So, they would not fill it. Nights are my worst for head pain so I started to panic. She called the NeuroSurgeon On-Call but since it was a narcotic, they could not send the order electronically and it had to be hand delivered to the pharmacy! I was out of luck and out of pain med.

Seriously - we have reverted to a paper process in 2014 for pain meds!!! Read more...

First thing in the morning, Fay was on the phone trying to sort out the mistake which wasn't fixed until 2 today. We drove to Stanford, again, to pick up the new prescription that was written on the right paper.

So this was my first time out since surgery and it was back to the Stanford NeuroScience Center. NOT my first choice of places to go. Plus, fay was pretty worked up over the huge mess. Super mad!
Seriously, no joke!

At least we stopped for lunch at the Fish Market for clam chowder. But, being out in a restaurant was overwhelming. The crowd and the noise...sensory overload.

Luck O' the Mick

Josh and I decided to post some pix of something we call Luck O' the Mick. When bad, dumb, annoying or crazy things happen to us, we blame it on the Luck O' the Mick.
Here's a few "bad luck" things from the past few days.

1. Somehow forgot to be given pain meds in ICU after first surgery
2. Emergency surgery - drain in head
3. Extra scar - due to emergency surgery
4. Pain med re-fill screw up
5. Botched haircut
(she was told just to shave his face) Yikes!