Friday, March 9 # 3 ( 10:30pm)

What a long drive.. seemed longer than usual this time.

Walk in the door of Kerrie’s room and she looks at me, smiles and says”Hi. How are you?”

“I’m fine Kerrie. I missed you… did you miss me?”

“I hope I did!”

“You hope you did? You don’t know if you missed me? I know I missed you.. you hope you did?”

“Yeah.. I hope I did. ”

“I missed you Jenny.”

“Good.. because I sure as hell missed you.”

She was wide awake, so I was actually able to get her talking about her day and her trip to the Third Floor. She said it was a nice surprise and that she can’t wait to get back. Three months.. that’s her goal. She wants to be back at work in three months. I’m definately not going to stand in the way of that and tell her it’s not possible.. but we’ll see.

Then she told me about the visitor she’d had today.. Kit!  Kit was the youth director, at our church, when Kerrie and I were in High School  and knows the best and worst about us… she probably knows more about the best of Kerrie and the worst of me 🙂 … and has known our family for a very long time.  She’d come to see Kerrie the week she was at home and then made the trip to NOMC this afternoon. When she visited Kerrie, at home, it’s the first time we’d seen her in close to 20 years, so Kerrie told me seeing her again today was the best surprise ever. Although Kerrie said she only stayed a few minutes, she was very happy that Kit was there ( Kit if you’d stayed a long time she just would have fallen asleep on you..)

When Kerrie was at Henry Ford,  before the tranplant and before the stroke, I would drive her crazy when it was time to go to sleep… She had to have absolute dark, absolute quiet. I can’t get to sleep without a little noise and usually leave the TV on a timer. She would humor me, and leave the TV on, but I know it drove her nuts.

After the stroke, we couldn’t get her to turn the TV off.. and she had to have it so loud that you couldn’t hear yourself thinking if you were sitting in the next room. We finally were able to work on the volume problem, but the TV has been on 24 hours a day since she had the stroke.

Tonight she did something that really shocked me… we were watching Jay Leno and I asked her if she would mind if I went to sleep. I’d had a long day, a long drive, had barely been able to keep my eyes open the last hour of my drive and was fading fast. She said she wouldn’t mind.. so rolled over and closed my eyes. Then I heard it… silence. I rolled back over and was surprised to see the TV turned off. Seriously, she has not voluntarily turned off that TV in 5 months.

“Kerrie, you don’t have to turn off the TV. I can sleep with it on. Go ahead and watch it.”

“No. I’m tired. Don’t want the TV on.”

“Do you want me to get you any ice chips or anything before I go to sleep?”

“No. I’m tired. I’m just going to go to sleep.”

I almost called Mom just to tell her…. 

Every day we see a little bit more of “Kerrie” coming back. It may not seem like it, but turning off that TV is a pretty big deal.

Keep it up Ker-bear.. I’ll learn to sleep with the TV off!