There's a "cooking club" at Good shepherd where a bunch of the patients get together and make food. Yesterday they made cookies and today three of them worked on making spaghetti and salad and garlic bread. It's a great idea cause it gets them to do all kinds of chopping, standing while cooking and buttering the bread that's therapy even though it doesn't seem like it.

We had a meeting this afternoon with a representative from the county and a case manager who were filling us in on options for her for once she's ready to leave Good Shepherd and while we talked about that stuff Andie was in therapy, then she was finished and came in to see what we were talking about and she then got the gist of what was going on and was really upset when she realized that when she leaves in about two weeks she'll most likely be going to another facility and not directly home. She was deeply disappointed by that and kind of moped around until we got her talking again after dinner. This is a situation where tough love is going to be best for her. I can imagine that she feels trapped in that locked brain trauma ward and to some extent trapped in her own mind by the lack of ability to communicate with us, that's bad enough but now to be told that she won't even be independent like she used to be has to be like a nightmare. It would be nice if she could come to my parents house but here she'd only get therapy two or three times a week but at a facility she'd get it every day like she does now. We've been told that the first 3- 6 months will be the time of greatest improvement and to keep her moving during that time will better her chances of a full recovery. If she were here I think she'd be more likely to lose motivation and slack off. It's easier to say no - and shut up! to us than to the therapists.

After lunch this afternoon while Dad and I were telling Andie about all that's gone on since her surgery. She was looking at a calendar that we'd taken in to refresh and work on some short term memory and she couldn't believe that so much time had passed since she knew what was going on. She doesn't remember her hospital stay at all - no surprise there and I think she's just becoming aware of what's going on. I asked her if she remembered the helicopters coming and going at LVHC and she - for a moment - thought I meant she had been brought in on one. At this point we could tell her anything and she'd believe it wat the truth. Hmmm....

Her communication has become more like disjointed phrases instead of random words and she gets frustrated with herself cause she seems to know what she wants to say and then stuff just comes out then she laughs and I usually laugh too while trying to figure out what she's talking about. Luckily she's pretty good humored about it and just kind of shrugs it off once she tries a few times to tell us something and can't get the point across. I'm glad we can laugh with her in those cases and she doesn't think we're laughing at her. She has been somewhat paranoid about being talked about.
Still, when she's not over- thinking of what she's trying to say she can get real thoughts out. She told me to shut up and once we went back and forth and she said "shut up first" after we'd said it to each other a few times while we were joking around. I brought her a hard sided glasses case and was trying to get her to say"off the face, in the case" like Josh's eye doctor taught him and she just said"Okay, MOMMIE!"
As we went over the time since her surgery and how fortunate she is to have had such great medical care. At one point she incredulously said to my Dad and I "I almost died, I coulda died and I wouldn't even have known it!"