How is your mom today?

She’s doing well today, thanks for asking.

When I got to the hospital, my dad was still at home, working on finances and things (my mom used to do all the bills and such, so my dad is wading through all her paperwork and trying to figure out her system). So I got to have a couple of hours with just me and my mom.

She actually wasn’t in the room when I got there – she was still at speech therapy. When she came back, the speech therapist told me some of her improvements for the day. Today she:

• ate the first real food she’s had since this started. She ate some banana, some bread, and some pudding. She said the pudding was especially good.
• swallowed small sips of water without coughing.
• learned how to say the vowels “a,” “o” and “e.”
• sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” When I say sang, I mean kinda vocalized the vowels and the melody, and moved her mouth to imitate the speech therapist a little bit.

That is really, really good progress for a day’s work. It also means she might be off the feeding tube and on real food in the next few days, which I know she would absolutely love. Apparently feeding tubes are really uncomfortable. Who knew it wasn’t pleasant to have a tube through your nose and down the back of your throat?

After all of that (and all the physical and occupational therapy she also went through today) she was pretty tired, but I still got to spend a few hours telling her stories. It was fun to just talk with her, to hear her occasionally say words (she said “nice” and “yes” today, and I mean she actually said those words). She also tried to talk a lot more, and kept wanting to say things, but it mostly came out as random vowel sounds. It was great to hear her trying to speak, but also a little hard, for both of us, because I just couldn’t understand her.

I also snuck her some water, and some of my ice cream bar. I blame her – she’s very persuasive when it comes to getting us to break the rules for her. But with both the water and the ice cream, she was able to drink and eat and swallow everything without a problem, which was amazing. And funny – especially since we may have gotten some clandestine ice cream on her blanket…