11th February 2011

Well, I wrote this message last night to say how good Steven had been at night, and last night he had a bad nights sleep. That's after 4 full nights sleep. However, he is still drowsy during the daytime, caused mainly by the medication. Steven has his minor setbacks, otherwise okay. The pains are in the same places, but his wounds are healing very well. But....according to Steven he was in a boat at 1am one night, and he even repeated this story to his speech therapist, in our presence, much to her surprise. He's also had a good 2 weeks with his elder brother Mark, despite the fact that Mark has been at work in England since his return from New Zealand a month ago. And, according to Steven there are too many Chinese in the physio'. Where all these stories are coming from we have no idea, but he mentioned the Chinese a few weeks ago. Needless to say there are no Chinese in the physio' and Steven hasn't got a racist bone in his body. We've told him he's probably been dreaming, but he insists he hasn't, and now thinks he's going crazy. We saw his speech therapist yesterday. She was going to explain about Steven's ability to swallow and move his tongue, but Steven had bubbled us to the speech therapy police, and we'd been rumbled. But she was fine, and was pleased he was feeding well. Steven's speech is still in it's infancy. There are times when we can't understand what he's saying because he's not very clear, other times he's fine, and we can have small conversations. But generally it's difficult, and that makes us all irritated to some degree. If we ignore him it's upsetting for him, but when we can't understand him, it's upsetting for all of us. We have to wait for Steven's muscles in his throat and jaw to work properly. He understands us fully, that isn't a problem, as I've said before, he's retained his intelligence, and that's the problem for him, causing him much frustration that he can't do what he wants to do. We are now going to be given mouth and facial excercises for Steven to follow, and we have to encourage him to do those.
As each week goes by we see the improvements in other patients, this makes us hopeful for Steven's future.
best regards