Paul's Update - 05/09/07

Dear Friends:

Tuesday was a good day. Paul had physical therapy at 9:30. Cathy worked him pretty hard again. She had him work on upper trunk muscles. He would They also played Connect Four while sitting on the exercise ball. This is a favorite game from Paul's childhood ... a really good choice. He won two out of three games. He had to pick his color pieces out of the box to play. He was the black pieces and he picked out all his own pieces while playing. He used strategy while playing so he could beat her!! He had to stand at the U-shaped box and played blackjack. Dad shuffled the cards and Paul cut the deck. Dad dealt the cards and let Paul choose whether to pick another card to try to beat Dad. He beat Dad every time!! After that they played War. Paul held all his cards in one hand and would lay a card on the table with the other hand. He had to stand without holding onto the box in order to do that. He did that a couple of times before he had to hold onto the box to stabilize himself. He would tell Dad who won each time by saying "I won" or "you won". Afterwards he went to the peddle bike and worked for five minutes. The bike has handles on it so if you use them it works out the upper body. After the session was over Paul walked back out to the waiting room before using the wheelchair. Paul didn't want to come to the table for dinner. Since he had the tooth extraction he has not felt like sitting at the table. That is OK ... sometimes we like to sit in the living room and eat our dinner too! After dinner I asked him if he was OK. He said "no". I asked "what is wrong?". He thought for a minute and said "ear". I asked him if he had an earache and he said "yes". Since he had a tooth extracted I suspected that his mouth may be hurting so I asked "which ear?". He couldn't tell me but I asked "right or left?". He said "right". That is the side where he had the tooth pulled. We gave him some Ibuprofen and that seemed to help. We spent the evening watching TV. It was American Idol & House night. Paul wanted to struggle to watch all of House but by 10:45 it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. Wednesday we had to start out early to take Paul to the neurologist. This was the review of Paul's MRI. He didn't really tell us anything we didn't expect. He said that a very large portion of Paul's brain matter had been damaged and has died off. There is evidence of damage and also holes in his brain. The right side of his brain has a very large hole and the left side has a slightly smaller hole. There is lots of damage to the frontal lobes where the behavioral activities occur which accounts for Paul's inappropriate behavior and lack of judgment. He said that it appeared that the shunt is working correctly and there isn't anything that can be "fixed". For now we will continue to monitor his blood every three months and just keep doing what we are doing!! After Dad got Paul home and did some errands he came to my work so we could have lunch together. Dora stayed home and made sure that Paul had lunch. Paul has been doing more and more walking with minimal assistance. He uses his walker and Dad just walks behind him to catch him if he loses his balance. He also is getting better with his standing and sitting. Tonight Paul joined us for bible study. We sat outside in the front yard since it was a beautiful night. While we were talking Paul was looking out to the street. Dad asked "what do you see?" Paul said "new mail". Dad asked "what did you say?" and Paul said "I want to open mail"!!! What an amazing thing to come up with all by himself! I believe it shows he is being more able to process thoughts to words! Thursday Dad, Paul, Carolyn & Max are taking a trip to visit Grandma Johnson at Lake Anna right after physical therapy. It should be a nice outing for all!

Have a great day Lynne & Carl