Day 168 – Grayson’s Journey

Dear family and friends

Today Grayson had the wonderful opportunity to sleep in! This is perhaps the first time since arriving here that he was able to do so. Regina and I had another commitment to attend to, so we didn't have the staff drag him (literally) out of bed to get ready for church. Tomorrow he is back on schedule, but today he was blessed with some extra sleep!

This evening, Grayson chose to go to the 5:00 PM service at the local Foursquare Church with several of his fellow residents. We were pleased that he chose to spend some of his Sunday voluntarily going to church, as this has not always been the case!

After he returned home, Grayson helped his residential assistant (RA) prepare dinner. Tonight he had steak (broiled), baked potatoes and mixed greens. After cleaning up dinner dishes, Grayson did his chores – sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor. This was the first time we had the opportunity to actually see Grayson perform household chores. He had some difficulty putting the broom on to the floor to actually sweep, but with a lot of encouragement and direction, he was able to get most of the dirt gathered in a pile. Grayson then was handed a wet Swiffer to mop the floor. He got the Swiffer on much of the floor, but it was only with a lot of prompting and pointing that he was able to be minimally effective. The objective is to train patterns, and every day is a lesson. Unfortunately, he is far from independently completing these tasks at this point.

Next was the therapeutic home program (THP). He did quite well on the orientation questions – what city he was in, who is the President, the name of the facility, why he was there (brain injury), the date and the time. In the following set of questions he was presented with three things, and he needed to give the common thread. For example: strawberry, peach, banana – all are fruit. Ford, Nixon, Lincoln – presidents. We all cracked up when the question was, "Bill, George, Thomas" – Grayson responded, "presidents"! I know that they were looking for the word, "names", but he was also correct.

After the RA finished, I asked some questions of my own to test long term memory. In the same format, I asked, "monomial, polynomial, integral", and Grayson responded, "Math". I asked him what a USB is, and he responded, "universal serial bus". He also correctly answered several other computer related questions, like what a router does, listing of operating systems, and understanding of an IP address. He remembers the computer stuff!

We shared out goodbyes with lots of love, grateful for another weekend together.

Pax!

Brant