This week was Amanda’s first full week back home. Lots of sleeping to aid brain recovery and also continued improvement in movement and feeling in her right arm and hand.
She is keen to get into a regular routine so is up by 7.30, showering unaided, then getting dressed and her own breakfast with very little assistance other than the occasional reminder of what to do next or where to find stuff.
I’m continuing to use coloured tokens to improve her mental arithmetic and she is beginning to slowly get to grips with spelling again. I can see there are very specific, but critical bits of connections missing. Identifying shapes are a challenging example. 4 commom shapes; circle rectangle, square and triangle, all cut out in white paper. Hold them up one at a time and get her to call them out. Repeat, repeat, repeat. 20 seconds later and the circle is completely forgotten. So frustrating for both of us!
On the plus side, Amanda was determined to try her (left)hand at ironing, which she did successfully(see photo, below).
Meanwhile with Jess moving from Wellington to Christchurch, the plan was to take a van over, collect her stuff, stay overnight in Welly, back home for a night, then drive down to Christchurch. In the meantime, Amanda was discharged, so we decided she could come too! – She made the Wellington leg, although it completely tired her out. She managed to negotiate the steps to Jess’ flat (see photo below), but decided after an uncomfortable ride back from Picton, that Christchurch was just too far, so sensibly stayed home.
This morning she finished her shower and tied a proper BOW with her dressing gown cord one (left) handed.
Tomorrow, for the first time we get a morning shower/breakfast carer for an hour and again for an hour at lunchtime. This is in preparation for me returning to work next week. By then hopefully she will have (re)learned how to use a phone!
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