Dear family and friends
I called the residence tonight and discovered (not that it was a big surprise) that Grayson was at the movies. Friday night is movie night, and Grayson has been attending pretty regularly lately. So regularly in fact, that Regina and I decided to stay home this evening. We'll drive up in the morning, and arrive after he finishes his grocery shopping.
Continuing the outbrief of Tuesday's patient conference, tonight I'll talk about speech therapy. Grayson has progressed to a new level in his therapy module. There is an increasing length in the readings he is working with, and he needs to remember more facts in order to answer the questions on the reading. He is now working with 50 word passages, instead of 35 word passages from the prior reporting period.
The staff is now incorporating task check lists in more areas for Grayson. Lists are helping him to remember what tasks need accomplishing, but he still doesn't remember to check the task list itself. Grayson has had great gains in orientation, and he is able to say where he lives, and why he is there (brain injury). He also remembers the year and the names of our newly elected officials. (If you recall, he still thought that George Bush was president and Gray Davis was governor when he first arrived here.) He still has difficulty not substituting our phone number for his new one.
Grayson is being given assignments to be completed in an increasingly distracting environment. His first assignments were in a quiet room. His next assignments were done while music was playing on the radio. The next assignments were done while TV was on. Grayson was able to keep focused on the first two scenarios but not the last – the TV is Grayson's Achilles' heel. When the TV is on, Grayson just freezes in his tracks, and all other meaningful work is over. This tells us that Grayson needs a very un-distracting environment to accomplish tasks. In the real world, where does that exist?
I'll share the final bits of the patient conference within the next few days. We look forward to visiting Grayson tomorrow!
Pax!
Brant
Hi Brant and Regina:
ReplyDeleteUh, Grayson sounds pretty normal if he doesn't hear others when the TV is on. Kemi is married to someone just likt that!!!!!!!
Hava a great weekend.
In Him,
Doug
Oh, I do sympathize with Grayson and dealing with distraction. Even with an only-slightly-non-standard nervous system, I'm finding over-rich environments hard to deal with. But such places do exist, and when all else fails, you just make them for yourself. (Because if you don't, who will?)
ReplyDelete