An Update as of 10/13/12

Our big news this weekend is that on this upcoming Friday Bob will “graduate” from inpatient rehab and to return to life in the “real” world! Our plan is to stay in Charlottesville in the condominium for the first two weeks in order for Bob to continue outpatient rehab at Health South and to be near his doctors here at UVA. We then plan to make the transition back home to Williamsburg on November 3^rd.

There will certainly be challenges ahead in making these moves, but I think these are going to be really important steps in healing Bob’s memory. One of the challenges will be that Bob is still rebuilding his physical strength from his month on inactivity. He is now beginning to get around using the walker rather than the wheelchair, except for longer jaunts like our daily walk outside, which he enjoys tremendously. We have been having some lovely fall days here in Charlottesville. The bigger challenge is going to be learning live safely with Bob having such an impaired short-term memory. His sense of time and space also seem to be pretty impaired as well. We are very hopeful that all of these things will heal in time and that he can make a full recovery. But progress is likely to be incremental and take some months, so we are going to have to establish new routines and patterns of living in the meantime.

The good news is that Bob is continues to have a very positive attitude and has a strong desire to do the work needed to get better. He is accepting of the feedback that his conversation is repeating itself and he is even starting to have some awareness himself when he is saying the same things over and over again. He has begun to keep a journal where he captures his thoughts as well as his activities at several points throughout the day. That is proving to be very helpful and is giving him some perspective of the passage of time. I am guessing that this will be one of the strategies that we maintain and rely on throughout this healing process. I’m sure we will invent others as well. Michelle shared with Bob an analogy that she uses with her students, many of whom struggle with memory issues. She tells them that their brain is like a house where the electricity is not working well, so what we can do is to make sure that there are lots and lots of flashlights in the house. Those flashlights are the strategies that we can learn to use. From the outside, people are going to see lights on in the house, but only you are going to know that you are using strategies, or flashlights. (When Michelle shared this analogy with Bob, he added “Yeah, they also won’t know how many batteries I’m using up!).

Bob is also his sweet loving self. He recognizes the people he knows and loves and that is a blessing. He enjoys having visitors and talking on Skype with family members. He also enjoys looking at family photos, even though he is a little overwhelmed at remembering so little about the context of the pictures. A coaching colleague reminded Bob that he was having the opportunity to practice IAC coaching mastery #4: Processing in the Present. Somehow there have got to be some important lessons in that!