Jogging Her Memory

It's been another long day of rehab for Court which included more walking and eating. She took another twenty steps in the harnessed walker, we're really proud of her progress though she's frustrated about having to relearn tasks that came so easily two months ago. Today's menu was pureed beef, cheddar broccoli soup and pumpkin pie.

In speech therapy Rachel ran over a set of exercises to improve her short term memory. The first was a series of one paragraph stories that the therapist read and then asked Courtney to repeat. Having to keep track of the details in three sentences is difficult for Courtney, but we learned two strategies to improve her memory. The first is repetition. Repeating small details over and over helps to her to recall them. Repetition is the first strategy we learned.

The second memory building technique is association. Courtney was given a grocery list of three items: milk, bread and apples. If she forgets one or two of the items, we can give her hints like the aisle in which its found or similar products that she can associate them with. It feels like we're back in grade school (if Susie has five apples and Johnny eats four of them, how many apples does she have left? (and should she reevaluate her relationship with Johnny the apple inhaler?)) That was a double parenthesis.

Since she can't watch TV or videos, we listened to some choice stand-up comedy specials from George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock. I thought Court could just ditch the grocery list and commit to memory Carlin's list of the seven dirty words.

The final details with Crotched Mountain are being hammered out and we're expecting a move soon, closer to days than weeks. We're looking forward to having weekend visitors and keep our fingers crossed that we take the next step soon.

-Sean