she's walking

When I first got here this morning Andie was being fussy and acting sad / confused and she even called therapy "crap" in her mouthing it past the trach tube kind of way. Well, she napped a short time then once she got up she didn't want to go to speech therapy but went anyway - I think it was good to get her out of her room - she would stay there all day if they let her.

In speech therapy she started out by fussing and crying and it seemed like there was something that hurt her but she couldn't communicate that to us so the therapist gave her pen and paper and started off by writing ANDIE then Andie used her left hand and scribbled ANDRIA and they went back and forth - all the while she seemed to be calmer - and the therapist gave us some stuff to work on in her room and blank paper to use there.

We moved on to OT and she really didn't want to be there fussing and grabbing at me holding on really tight. We then went into a conference room and she seemed better than in the big, active, noisy room but still acting like something hurt, again unable to articulate it - by this point I'm wondering if she's just saying this to get out of the therapies. We stuck to it and I'd brought Perfection and Connect Four from my parents' house and we played around with those. At first she was trying to put the Connect Four checkers in through the front of the thing like the other puzzles she's worked here. Again while she's engrossed in therapy she's not fussing or complaining. She did learn to drop the checkers through the top of the game and eventually put them all in. Keep in mind that each time she does one then she looks around... and acts bored... and then gets around... to putting it in either with help from me or the therapist or both. During one of the lulls in action I asked the therapist about Andie's perception of time right now and she said we don't know since her communication with us is so limited. Then in Perfection you fit shapes into their appropriate slots and she needed quite a bit of help on that one and you could see her getting frustrated and at times looking uncomfortable but she was pretty much neglecting the far right side of the game even after the therapist moved it over to the left- this is something unusual per the therapist but she's not sure what this means.

She had some rest then went in for PT where they had her walking first with parallel bars for support then down the hall with a walker and three therapists helping her do it. It took a while to get her up and going but once she made it to the end of the hall there was a round of applause from the staff nearby.

It's hard to believe that she's only been here a week and that she's already able to walk... after much encouragement and hard work on the part of the staff.