Thursday, March 17

It has now officially been over a month and a half, and nothing is even beginning to simmer down...

I'm afraid I've been a bit misleading, and maybe even over-optimistic, in previous posts. I've had people come up to me saying how happy they are that Trevor is walking, talking, going up stairs, etc. on his own. However, none of this is true.

Trevor is not doing anything on his own. He will occasionally say a new word, but generally he does not use the words in the right context. The words he says are mainly automatic words, "words not directly under the control of person's conscious mind, and are spoken without thought" (Wikipedia). These are words that have been implanted in his brain since he was really young, such as the alphabet and numbers. Even these are not always correct though; he skips numbers and goes out of order frequently. While reciting these memorized lists, he will often switch from list to list. For example, he will be counting and then all of the sudden switch to days of the week without noticing. Outside of therapy, Trevor responds to everything with "nope," but we have no idea what he actually means.

For me to say that Trevor can now walk is completely deceptive. Trevor "walking" requires one physical therapist to physically move that right leg for him and another physical therapist to hold him up by a pastel rainbow-colored strap around his waist. Him going up stairs is the same thing. When I say he is lifting up his right arm or right leg, I actually mean that there is either a machine sending electric shocks to his muscles to move them, or that the therapist is stimulating these muscles with a vibrator.

He is stubborn and all empathy is gone. He gets what he wants and that is that. We cannot talk him out of anything. We cannot explain to him why things need to be done differently. We cannot convince him to stay in the cafeteria for two more minutes so we can finish our food. We cannot explain to him that we don't have to be ten minutes early to therapy. We cannot convince him to leave his arm splint or gait belt on.

Yes, Trevor is progressing. No, Trevor is not even 10% of what he used to be. He wakes up, goes to therapy, lays in bed, watches TV and then goes to sleep. Everyday. Having said that, come visit him please.

Here's a quick summation of what happened today:

During physical therapy, they asked Trevor what he wanted to do. Of course he said "nope." They then asked him if he would rather walk or do stairs. He said "neither." Although we were all stoked on this new word that actually made sense, they made him do stairs anyway...

Speech therapy in a nutshell:

Michelle: Hi Trevor. How are you?
Trevor: Ummm, go to Wendy's. [Laughs, confused as to where that came from]

M: Trevor, do you like Alyssa's watch?
T: Green.
M: Yes, it is green. But I was asking for a no or y-?
T: Yellow.
M: Can you say yes?
T: Yellow, yellow, okay, yes, yellow
M: Trevor, say yes again.
T: Go [Laughs and then a few minutes later...] Yes.

She then had Trevor practice typing on her iPad. She would give him the keyboard and he would think for a few seconds. Then all of the sudden, a lightbulb would go off in his head. It was like he actually thought he was about to type some genius word, but then would type something along the lines of "adhnr" or "querdds." For him to type "I ride a John Deere," it took probably five minutes. The therapist would try to explain where the letters were, he would type the wrong ones, have to figure out how to delete them, go through this process a few times and then finally get the right letter. It's pretty crazy to watch, especially due to the fact that pre-accident he could type about a bazillion words per minute.

She showed him a bunch of differently colored buttons. She asked him what color his John Deere is. He pressed white, and then yellow, and then orange and then green. She asked him what color his pants were. He pressed every color before the right one. (Again, not so good at multiple-choice tests!) Then she asked him what my favorite color is. He had to think about this one for a few minutes, scrolling through the colors several times, but eventually got it right!

M: Okay, now let's count from 10 to 100 by tens. 10, 20..?
T: Tuesday, Wednesday.
M: Try again. 10, 20..?
T: November, January, June.
M: Try again. 10, 20..?
T: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday.
M: 10, 20, 30.
T: 40, 50, Thursday.

M: Okay, let's do the days of the week. Monday..?
T: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Great success! And then..

M: I want you to start saying bye. Can you say bye or see ya later?
T: One hundred.
M: Bye?
T: Hundred.

Ah, crack!

Trevor was extremely frustrated during occupational therapy today, to the point that I even saw tears run down his face. I don't think I've seen him this upset yet, so that was really hard to take. But, with vibration triggering the muscles in his right arm, he was able to lift it exponentially higher than he ever has. Great news! I'm convinced that it's some sort of magical vibrator wand. Without it, he can't lift his arm an inch, but with it, he can lift his arm all the way, fight crime and probably even create world peace.

Alright, so there are officially over 23,000 views on this blog, which is awesome. Now if 0.0001% of you would come visit Trev, that would be even better! He is lonely and bored. I cannot emphasize enough how much he needs friends during this time. We're all super boring. so come help us out!!