Promised update...

Hi all. So sorry I didn't update on Grace last night. I couldn't get her to go to sleep so I decided to lay down with her. Well...when I woke up 3 hours later I was just too tired to type, LOL.

Grace has been doing GREAT! Back when we were at Strong (was that really at the beginning of this month? It feels like last year!)the doctors told us to expect at least 6 months of ACUTE rehabilitation and years of outpatient. At least 6 months...well we have tentatively been told that we should be going home sometime in January! She will definitely need to have a lot of outpatient rehabilitation and physical therapy...but AT HOME.

Progress:
***Grace has definitely gotten her voice back 100% and her personality is almost normal. She's learning a lot in her speech therapy and doing well with socialization. She does have some behavioral issues we are working through. The neuro-psychologist here and I were talking yesterday about this, and he thinks she'll do better when she is at home. One of the side effects of stroke is inhibition, and she does show that. If she doesn't like something, she has no problem saying so. She also has a much harder time settling herself down when she gets upset than she used to.
***She has been eating a normal diet for almost a week now, and doing very well. I still have to remind her to go slow and chew the food really good. Sometimes I think that it's more for my sake though than hers.She does still drink the thickened liquids, because she still chokes a bit on the regular. We are praying that she will be able to get to thinner liquids before we go home.
*** She loves her therapy, AKA playtime with her "play people". I'm wondering what we're going to do when we get home and she realizes that Jessy, Sarah, Will, and Jessica all stayed here. She absolutely ADORES them!! Yesterday I walked into one of her OT sessions. She was with a different person than normal and I just wanted to check on her. Well, there she was, using her RIGHT hand (the one that the doctors said would probably never work again) to THROW rings around a ring toss. She even made three or four! That's HUGE...hand eye coordination, fine motor skills, large motor skills, and CONCENTRATION are all required.

For the biggest and best part of this update, I wanted to let the following video do the talking...



and Gracie do the WALKING!!