There are days when you feel you are beating your head against a wall. No one can tell you when things will connect, so you wait, but you never give up. After a month and a half of trying so many things to move things forward, Brianne started doing more...
It is often the little things, the ones we take for granted every day that surprise you the most. One evening as I was getting things settled for the night, I looked over and saw that Brianne had picked up the menu and was searching it top to bottom. I mean really studying it.
Up until this time words were a mess to decipher, and I didn't know when they would once again start making sense to her. Apparently, things were looking a bit familiar finally. I sat there and watched for what seemed like quite a while until she was done searching the menu. You might think I am funny to be so excited that my 29 year old daughter picking up an ordinary menu and was reading it. Excited really didn't do it justice, I was so elated. So much so that I hurried and snapped this photo and sent it to Dale.
Time as we knew it was no longer measured in seconds, minutes or days. It was measured in words, steps, eye movement and miracles. We shared all these to Brianne's FB group, #becauseofbri highlighting the triumphs, challenges, and our thoughts as we continued on this journey. It was good to keep everyone up to date and pictures sometimes tell the story more than words truly can!
To maybe put this in a bit more context... Only a few months prior to all this, Brianne was taking care of her little boy *Alex. Helping him to eat and everything a good mother does for her children. Now, fast forward just weeks and she was the one needing help. Much of her time in the hospital she was fed through a feeding tube because she actually couldn't even eat or swallow.
Watching the video below still gets us excited to see one of the first times she tried to eat by herself. It was far from perfect, we wanted to reach out and help, but knew she had to do it, as hard as it was for her to do this simple task. Who knew relearning simple things could be so challenging, if you compare it to just a week earlier, she actually did incredible. She was even able to keep her head up for the time she was eating. Seeing things start to really progress for her was energizing, for everyone.
The damage caused where the trach tube had been for so long was healing but she still couldn't talk much either from the damage or pain, we couldn't tell which. If you remember from an earlier post, the damage came from the trachea as both of the ones they used were far too big for her, so we assumed that could have played a part. But as time went on we also learned her inability to speak was partially due to the TBI injury. The TBI affected how much she was speaking, or more accurately, how little. As the days passed, she did better at feeding herself and most of it made it into her mouth. Celebration!!!
Abracadabra...pretty soon, with therapy and practice, shapes were now emerging onto paper when she was given a pencil. It is incredible how all these things are controlled by the brain. It is even more incredible how our brain can heal, and how our brains can reconnect these horrific injuries. We were just at the beginning of more tender mercies and miracles to come.
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