Day 167 – Grayson’s Journey

Dear family and friends

When we arrived today, Grayson was ready to go! His grocery shopping was done, and he and his residential assistant (RA) had labeled and put all of the food away. First on the agenda was to deal with some errands. This little bit of "normal Saturday" we now find ourselves accomplishing in Bakersfield, since that is where we usually ARE on Saturdays. Having Grayson along with us allows him to be in the community doing "normal" things with us, and allows us to be with him.

While on our errands, we usually have time to stop for an ice cream which Grayson always enjoys. Today it was Cold Stone, which is quite a favorite of his! While there, he thought that the cotton-candy ice cream sounded humorous, and pointed it out to me in a loud voice, as I was standing a bit away from him. A small girl stared up at Grayson – fascinated by his funny sounding voice, stuttering and poor diction – clearly realizing that he was "different". I smiled at her, and agreed with Grayson that the ice cream did sound fun, and asked him if he wanted to try some. After we left and went outside to enjoy our treats, I realized that it is entirely possible that depending on his level of recovery, Grayson's deficits may cause this sweet kid to be perceived as different by many, and require all of us to protect him for a very long time.

After the errands, it was off to the park to find adventure – the post brain injury kind. At the park we interspersed walking with several activities aimed at stimulating memory. The first was good-old Scout knots. Knot tying was always one of Grayson's best Scouting skills. I thought that it would be good for his finger dexterity, and his memory to do some practice. Today he was able to successfully tie a square knot without any instruction, but very slowly and deliberately for Grayson. When it came to tying the bowline, he just put his head down, something we have noticed when he becomes tired of an activity.

The next activity was built around some old SAT Prep Flash Cards we found recently. We divided the activity into parts – one math, the other verbal. "Flash" cards was a bit of a misnomer for the math, as most problems required you to work out an answer. With Grayson unable to write, this is a challenge. I was able to locate a few that he could work in his head, and some other definition items that he could explain, such as "What is the definition of an integer?"

The second part of the Flash Card exercise was the SAT verbal work. We presented sentences with grammatical errors, and he had to find the error. After a few minutes of that (he has the attention span of a young child) we shifted to vocabulary. Here I showed him a word and asked for a definition. He did very well on the few we did before needing to move on. Two words that I remember were "repel" and "revive". He was able to define both successfully, along with many others.

Between most of these activities we walked. Grayson's pace is now quite good, and he generally kept up with us while we were moving at a ¾ full throttle. Not bad! This is where the physical therapy is really paying off.

After the park, we went to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. We had a wonderful dinner, and Grayson ordered Shrimp Scampi Pizza – pretty memorable I thought. (It was really tasty also – I tried it!) On our way home from the restaurant, we asked him what he had for dinner and he said, "I don't know." Oh, the insidious nature of brain injury.

While deeply saddened for the losses of capability, we continue to be heartened by small glimmers of progress. Today we had the opportunity to witness both.

Pax!

Brant