Mayne, I mean WAYNE!

Tuesday, April 22nd: from Julie
Wayne makes progress everyday. Speech Therapy saw him today and he passed his swallow evaluation and was given water to sip on through a straw. The nurses ordered him a pureed lunch and dinner and Wayne polished both of them off nicely (or entirely). The pureed meals consist of pudding, applesauce, mashed potatoes, milk, juice, etc. I gave him a few glasses of water and I’m sure it feels so great to have fluids running down what must be a very dry throat. He was able to follow commands (verbal), do some ‘modeling’ (visual cues and commands along with verbal), and he wrote his name while the Speech Therapist worked with him: so she asked him to show her two fingers, he did; then she said, “Wiggle your fingers like this” and showed him what to do, and he did; and then she asked him to write his name, and he wrote “Momma” and then looked at it and shook his head and threw his head back a bit, sort of like, “What?! That doesn’t say ‘Wayne’.” And then wrote “MAYNE”. So, just one transposed letter, which kids do all the time with “N”s and “S”s and “E”s… that’s what I think anyway… And he got four letters right! The rehab resident/doctor said Wayne would be in Acute Inpatient Rehab for 4 – 6 weeks and then he would come home with me (which was a bit of a surprise—I didn’t think he’d come home or be ‘discharged’ so soon)! I’ve been told that it would be likely that Wayne would need 24 hour supervision at that point and would go to 2 – 4 hours of outpatient therapy a day once home. Some rare cases don’t need 24 hour supervision when they initially come home. I believe Wayne will be in that category—leaps and bounds, Wayne… leaps and bounds!!