Day 228 – Grayson’s Journey

Dear family and friends

Today I got a brief and rare glimpse into Grayson's morning routine, as his normal evening residential assistant (RA) worked a double shift and was with Grayson this morning. As anyone who has ever been a parent can attest, morning routines are way different than evening ones. Waking Grayson is very difficult, and he requires active supervision over his morning activities to keep on target to make the bus on time. The plan with Grayson is to do things early enough so that he is always early to the deadline. Today he was showered and dressed, he made his breakfast, ate it and put his dishes in the dishwasher in time so that he had about 10 minutes to relax in the recliner before going to "transpo" (the RA vernacular for the place where the buses pickup the patients). He relaxed for a few minutes on the bench at transpo until the bus arrived around 9:00 AM. He boarded the bus with all of the ambulatory patients and their RA's, and then the wheelchair users were brought aboard with the lifts. When everyone was on board, they took the 20 minute ride to the clinic and arrived as usual a little before 10:00 AM. Grayson's RA escorted him to his first session for today – occupational therapy.

When Grayson returned from the clinic, he came back to the apartment and immediately did one of his chores – cleaning the bathroom. After that, he started defrosting a steak for dinner and then rested while it defrosted until around 4:45 PM. At that point, with minimal prompting, he lined the pan with foil and set the oven to cook his steak. With suggestions from his RA, he seasoned the steak and cooked a vegetable. While everything was cooking, he sat at the dining table and read his new National Geographic. He ate all of his food tonight and without any prompting or cueing, he stood up after dinner, took his plates to the kitchen rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher. That was a first!

Grayson watched TV for a bit after dinner before doing his therapeutic home program (THP) with his RA. After the THP's, they went to the rec center for a discharge party for one of Grayson's former roommates, a nice young man who had been injured in an auto accident. Grayson took his party cupcake back to his apartment and ate it before getting ready for bed.

When I spoke to Grayson tonight he was nearly ready for bed. He didn't remember anything about his day.

Pax!

Brant