Tuesday, November 14th

Hmm.. once she starts talking you can’t shut her up. Well, at least not for the five minutes she had the energy to try to speak..

Kerrie may not completely look like Kerrie right now, but she is definately in there somewhere.. and fighting to get out.

She actually had us laughing tonight, as she showed she can still get irritated with me and still has her sense of humor.

Robin, her nurse, and I noticed that she is having a small problem with words like “you” and “I”, when she means to say “me” and mixes them up, but she knows she is making mistakes and keeps trying.

She was asking me to help her with something and she said ” Can you help you?” She knew this wasn’t right, so she tried “Can I help you?”She was frustrated, because she knew this wasn’t right either.. but at least I had enough sense to know she was trying to say “can you help me?”.

When she speaks she tries to say everything at once, as if in a normal sentence, but then it is very difficult to understand her.. I keep having to ask her to say one word at a time, slowly, and to make sure she seperates each word… and then I have to lean right down near her mouth to make it easeir to make out what she is saying ( This is partly due to some hearing problems of my own).. Even then it is very difficult to understand, but she keeps trying.

She got very frustrated, at one point, and said ” You don’t understand you”.. she knew this wasn’t right, so she tried “I don’t understand you”.. for some reason she can’t seem to say the word “me”.

These few sentences completely drained her energy and she had to rest for a while.. which meant I had sit in her room and try to leave her alone. Not an easy task when I am supposed to be washing out her mouth, giving nasal spray, changing her foot brace from leg to leg and getting her moving every hour.. but I told her to get her rest, because once Mom got there any thought of rest would be over 🙂

Before she went to sleep she did say one more thing that almost brought me to tears and made me want to crawl in bed next to her… the three best words in the world.. “I love you”!

When Mom got there, this evening, she had rested for a while and obviously felt like talking again. She said “OK” a few times and then, when Mom and Tina ( one of the nurses) were changing her sheets and giving her the hospital bed version of a bath, I walked in the room and she told me ” You have cigarette”.

Tina looked at me and asked if I smoked and Kerrie said “Yes” and then pointed at Mom and said “Yes”… OK little girl, you made your point.. but if you would quit riding on this rollercoaster we would have an easier time quitting!!!!The only reason you quit so easily is you were grounded to a hospital room for months and didn’t have a choice!

Tina said something about the strength coming back in her leg and Kerrie being able to walk again and Kerrie said “I will walk!”

We were pretty excited about this and kept asking her to say something else and then, in true Kerrie fashion, she scrunched up her face as if to be rolling her eyes at us and said “Bwabababababababababaaaaaa” as if to say “enough.. just leave me alone” and then we all started laughing.. even Kerrie”

That was it, as far as her talking adventure went for the night, and she was too exhausted to try anything else… head shaking, for yes and no, was it for the rest of the night.

As for everything else today, she went through a few excersizes with me, and Mom was getting ready to do more with her when I left, but no other physical therapy was done with her today. Occupational Therapy came in, in the morning, to see about making a brace to protect her right wrist but said they couldn’t do anything else with her today due to her low potassium level. I guess it was too low for them to do anything safely, and she didn’t get a potassium transfusion until after 4:00pm.. too late for them to work with her today. She lucked out, and ENT did not come in to do any of their “fun” procedures with her.. but she will probably have that to look forward to tomorrow morning.

Her vision is still fine in her right eye, but has she still has no movement or vision in her left eye. She is still unable to open her left eyelid, but the swelling has gone down to almost nothing and the lid moves whenever she blinks her other eye, so there may still be some hope that the eyelid will recover and be able to open. Although we have not been told anything definately, the vision and movement in the eye has been gone for several weeks now, so this may not recover. But nothing would surprise me with her. Even the doctors have said they have stopped being suprised by the things she does.

Although I still hated to leave her tonight, and return to Ohio, it was much easier this week and my heart was not so heavy when I walked out the door. When I said good bye she held my hand, looked at me and smiled as much as she could…

Even though she can only partially smile.. she still has the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.

See you in a few days Ker-Bear!