Paul's Update - 05/17/07

Dear Friends:

Thursday was a better day. When I got up this morning Paul was eating his breakfast in the living room. He ate all of his cereal without any help from Dora. She was so pleased ... she praised him for doing so well. Paul headed to therapy at 10am. Cathy was back and ready to work hard. She started by having him walk the length of the therapy room to a shelf that had screws in it at various heights and sizes. Paul had to stand in front of it and screw on the nuts. She started on the ones that were at eye level. He was able to do those pretty good. Then she wanted him to do some that were above his head. He could almost get to it but his arm wouldn't straighten out enough to reach it well enough to do it. After he had done that he had to walk back to the other end of the room. Cathy had some puzzles for him to do. A four piece, an eight piece and a sixteen piece puzzle of a person. He was standing at a table. She dumped the pieces on the table and he reached and picked up a piece and then another ... before you know it he had the four piece one done. No challenge!! Next was the eight piece ... Paul reached with his hand and started grouping the pieces on the table then picked them up and put them in the puzzle ... not much challenge!! The sixteen piece puzzle she put on his right side. He wanted to use his left hand so he reached across his body and picked up the pieces ... still not much of a challenge ... he seemed to know exactly where to put the pieces. He worked on the peddle machine for a bit. Cathy put the tension level at about 1/2 the strongest level. This slowed him down a little but he was able to do it. He would slow down and then start again ... he didn't do as much as last time but he did OK. Cathy wants him to work out a full five minutes on this machine. It looks like we will have a substitute soon since Cathy's son is having surgery soon. Hopefully it will be temporary, she will discuss it more next week. Paul was pretty tired after therapy and spent the afternoon relaxing. We went to dinner with Bill, Ronda & Vicky. Max came too ... and was very entertaining! It was a long dinner and we started out late. Bill was in traffic (duh!) coming home from work and didn't arrive until about 8pm. Paul ate a good dinner of Salmon & Mac 'n Cheese. He ate most of it without any help. We were out pretty late ... it was 9:30 before we got home. Paul wasn't ready for bed and he stayed up until 11pm. He still seems disinterested in doing a lot of things but he had a much better day! I will be gone for the next couple of days so I probably won't have an update until Sunday night. Ronda & I are going away with a couple of other women from our church for a Christian Women's Retreat at Sandy Cove in Maryland. We are looking forward to spending time together!

Have a great weekend! TGIF Lynne & Carl