Saturday, December 2nd

“Hello…” “Hello…” “Helloooo!”

I wake up and look at the clock.. it’s 3:00am

I’ve only been asleep since a little after 1:00am, so maybe I am dreaming. I roll over and look at Kerrie.. she’s waving to me and trying to get my attention. “Hello…” “HELLOOO!”

“I’m awake Kerrie. What do you need?”

“I need a piece of pizza.”

I’m groggy, so it takes me a minute to figure out she wants a cup of ice chunks. “Kerrie, do you want some ice?”   “Yes and a piece of pizza”.  “Kerrie I can’t give you a piece of pizza, but I’ll go get some ice.” “O.K. Yes.”

I crawl out of bed and down the hall to the ice machine.

“I want ice”  can also be decifered from the following:

I want Africa… I want a dog.. I want dilauded ( she’s getting a continous dose, so we know that’s not what she wants)… my luck is running out ( My ice cup is empty)

Although she’s talking quite a bit more, and is easily understandable, she is still having problems with names, words and getting her point accross. Sometimes she also seems to be very confused, but this usually doesn’t last too long.  When Mom walked in the room tonight she said “Hi. You look old.”  Meaning, of course, that she wanted Mom to get her some ice.

After Ted and I stopped laughing I went and got her more ice 🙂

She’s doing very well, in our opinion.. and the opinion of her doctors, but we are still nervous every time she seems to be a little confused or acting a bit odd. I suppose we will get used to it, but we are noticing it much more now that she is speaking more.

The initial results of the CT-Scan she had yesterday show some liquid forming around her Liver, but they don’t feel it’s a problem just yet and will continue to watch it. They were supposed to do a Liver Biopsy, last Monday, but that was posptoned due to the Craniotomy… For now, they don’t feel they need to do anything else.

Speech Therapy came in today and we had a major breakthrough… Kerrie ate pudding 🙂 At first she said she couldn’t swallow it, so the Therapist gave her a little water with it and she swallowed it. When the Therapist tried to give her more pudding she said, “I can’t do it.” But the Therapist stuck it in her mouth anyway.. and Kerrie swallowed. Her eyes got really big and she said “I did it” and gave us a huge smile.

For dinner, they actually brought her real food. Wonderfully delicous pureed Turkey and carrots with mashed potatoes and apple sauce. She said the mashed potatoes were to big, wouldnt even try the pureed turkey and carrots but loved the apple sauce. When I asked her if she liked being able to eat realy food again she cocked her head and gave me a look like “are you stupid?”

She hasn’t eaten in 5 weeks, so it’s going to take some time to get the swallowing back to normal, but the Speech Therapy team will be back in on Monday or Tuesday to see how she is progressing. Until then we are to give her small amounts of pudding and apple sauce, followed with small amounts of water to help her swallow. The Therapist told her that if she practices with the apple sauce and pudding this weekend she may be able to do more foods next week and maybe they will let her try something else on Tuesday.

Guess what she said… ” I want a piece of Pizza”  🙂

Hmm.. let’s work on the applesauce first Ker-Bear!