His Hands

This week has been a very busy one so far, but we're getting lots done!

My wonderful parents came to our place on Monday to assist us with some projects around the house, and it was a huge help! Before they came, Ryan and I did a bunch of cleaning/prep work for the projects. We were tired, but Ryan kept pulling energy from somewhere -- he just kept working all day! Ryan's main project for the day was fixing our lawn mower. One of our dogs broke the pull-to-start cord, so Ryan had to open it up to pull out the cord and re-wind the spring/coil inside. It was a difficult task, especially considering the depth perception, cognition, and fine motor deficits Ryan is dealing with. What really impressed me was Ryan's sheer determination. He worked on that lawn mower for at least 3 hours, trying different approaches to fixing it! 💙 In the end, he couldn't quite get it fixed on his own, but he did ask my dad for some help, so together they got it done! I snapped a picture of Ryan washing his hands afterwards because I'm so proud of his perseverance, humility, and strength. ;)

Thinking about Ryan's hands reminded me of a beautiful song about the Savior that I wanted to share here. I hope you enjoy it!

Yesterday Ryan's therapy sessions really wore him out! For speech therapy, Ryan had to name ten animals that are spelled with only 3 letters. His speech therapist is having to come up with new challenges for him than what she usually uses because, despite his deficits, he is still further along in his recovery than her "normal" patients. She placed a page full of alphabet letters in front of him and asked him to follow some pretty complicated directions:

1.  scan through the first two lines, circling all of the vowels
2.  scan through the second two lines, circling all of the consonants
3.  scan through the next three lines, circling all of the vowels
4.  scan through the next three lines, circling all of the consonants
5.  continue in that pattern, increasing each set of lines by one

Wow...that was a confusing task! Ryan did well until towards the end of step 3, then he had trouble keeping track of how many lines he had done. His therapist pointed out that he could mark the end of the rows to group the correct number of rows together and ease the burden on his brain. After he did that, he was able to finish the rest of the page! The next thing she had him do was a deduction puzzle similar to the one below, but she taught him some tricks to help him get through it without overloading his brain.


The final thing he did in speech therapy was something he was dreading...counting coins! The last time he was tasked with counting coins was over a month ago during his inpatient rehab stay, and it was a miserable experience for him. This time, he was able to sort the coins by type and count them up with only one or two hang ups! He felt good seeing that progress! 😊

Next up was his physical therapy session. It was the same routine as his previous sessions, just increased a little in intensity. Ryan is still really struggling with his balance, but he keeps pushing through and giving it his all.

Finally, he had occupational therapy. This therapist went over the results from the driving test she did with Ryan. She said he is super close to passing that test, but they still need to work on improving his vision and his mental processing speed. She said they will also work on helping Ryan be ready to re-enter the work environment. She had Ryan do several worksheets, including finding matching puzzle-piece shapes, circling all of the same word on a page full of words (both right-side-up and upside-down), filling in missing numbers, and writing all of the numbers from 100 to 0 in descending order. She also had him do this worksheet:

After all of this, Ryan was understandably exhausted. On our way to the car, he stumbled going down some stairs and fell. 😔There was definitely an angel there helping him, because he didn't hit his head, and he didn't fall down the rest of the cement stairs. He is now making sure he's holding a railing when he goes down stairs!

On Friday Ryan had some blood work done and his hemoglobin level was at 9.9, which is very low. He was told that when the hemoglobin gets down to a 7 or 8, that's when they give a person a blood transfusion. :( So we spent the weekend trying to get more iron into Ryan, and they re-tested his hemoglobin yesterday. It was still at a 9.9. This tells his doctor that Ryan may have a slow internal bleed (possibly an ulcer, since he has a history of ulcers). They did an ultrasound of Ryan's liver, kidneys, and spleen today, and that didn't reveal any big issues, so the next step will likely be an endoscopy. More prayers would definitely be appreciated!

Tomorrow is another full day of therapy for Ryan. Hopefully he'll have a break from appointments on Friday so we can go to the temple together. And then on Saturday we're planning a fun family outing. We're still taking things one day at a time, but we're slowly starting to plan things other than doctor appointments. :)