Day 5 Tuesday December 14th

Today was a pretty slow day for Elizabeth as we had to wait until the end of the day to get her to the Neuro Rehabilitation Center at Barrows Neurological Institute. The insurance came through mid day but the center is full and we had to wait for a bed. Most of the rooms are two to a room and we have one of those. Her roommate is nice and is a woman who is 36 like Elizabeth. She had a cancerous tumor removed in her brain. She is having some memory problems. Her name is Lisa and she will be here thru Christmas. It’s great to have a nice (and quiet) roommate. At any rate, the day was slow for Elizabeth before arriving at the rehab center at 7 pm. About the only thing really happening was the speech therapist coming earlier today. That went well as they practice leaning on syllables of words and to speak louder…. Elizabeth said “that’s funny, before this, people sometimes people would say I talk too loud” J Her voice volume is a week as well as the words are a little hard to understand. It’s basically that typical sound of someone who has had a stroke. This has improved slightly since the surgery. The left arm and leg are still seeing subtle improvements as well. Jaw still really really hurts.

Ultimately we can’t wait for her to get started on the rehab work and that includes her. Like her preparation for this whole thing, her determination, like I said before, is still there as her mom walked in on Elizabeth calling the insurance company to get their ass in gear about the rehab….  after all she’s been through in the last four days…Crazy huh?. She’s a tough little cookie man! It will be hard work for her but she is up to the challenge. She say’s “ I gotta get better for my boy” … she has been weepy thru out this time with missing Jack. It makes me cry too. She really misses him a lot!!! She keeps saying “ I’ve never been away from him for more than 8 hours… this is so hard to be away from him this long” Sometimes I wonder what’s harder for her…. this whole surgery stuff or just being away from him so long. I know how she feels as I need my fix after a long work day too. We just really start to miss him. I brought her a picture Jack made for her. She really liked that very much as I see her gazing at it with a little sparkle in her eyes. The great news about all this is they will get to see each other tomorrow!!! I hope I don’t turn into a sobbing mess as this will be a very emotional meeting! It will be so good for all of us!


She is still not eating to good but we’re working on it. She is trying but it’s hard. A few people had mentioned about drinking ensure and I failed to mention in past that she has taken sips of strawberry ensure as she knows from working for abbot all about ensure. She keeps telling the everyone including the staff that” a person can technically live off this stuff “. Hopefully the staff already knows that if they have a good rep (like her J). Unfortunately it was only a few sips a day when she had much worse nausea. Nausea has been better which is good. She asked for a strawberry banana smoothie and said she would try some mash potatoes. I went and got those off site. She did well with the smoothie and ate a few blueberries The most I’ve seen her drink at one time….probably about 10 oz. She wanted to wait on the mash potatoes as she said she was feeling full and was getting drowsy again from the pain meds.

Tomorrow will be a BIG day for Elizabeth. She will have a lot of eval in morning and then will start working. She will have a break from 3-6pm and will rest. Her and jack will then get to see each other in the evening. I have a feeling she will sleep good tomorrow night.  I will update tomorrow on what they will have started her on and how she did. I always kid her about how she’s an over achiever with everything she does.  This will be no different!

Thanks again for all your continued well wishes and encouragement!!!  I update her daily on all your comments! She is inspired by them! She always tells me to remember to thank everyone for her. She may be upto trying to leave a post soon.

Can’t wait for tomorrow!

I will update soon…

John