Saturday 28 May 2011

28th May 2011

Hiya,
we think our work starts now. We're having a lot of problems with Steven. Wednesday evening we had a full-on emotional crisis, where he went ballistic, and needed 4 nurses and me to calm and hold him down. All it needs is a wrong word in the wrong place and Steven gets hypercritical, and this is what happened. I was trying to talk a little sense to him due to his general attitude to everyone, but he wouldn't take the advice, saying that it's everyone else’s fault. Basically he has no social skills whatsoever, despite his strangely increased intelligence. He can put forward reasonable arguments on almost every subject, but does it without emotion. Strangely, he talks completely different to his girl friends, and is a really pleasant. So.............he has the body of a 26yr old, the intelligence of a grown-up, he talks almost like a 12yr old child, but seems to have the emotions and tantrums of a 6yr old, work all that out, and hopefully you'll see what we're up against. The doctors explained it very cleverly, they said, "Can you tell Steven to run now?" I of course replied "No". The doctor then said basically, that just because Steven's body is reacting very well, it doesn't mean his brain is improving at the same rate. All those nerve endings are still connecting. Steven cannot discriminate between emotions, this is why he's fine with his girlfriends but not with us or anyone else. Steven is pushing the boundaries of control as would any child. If you tell a child not to touch a hot object, chances are the child will touch it. This is the way the child learns. Steven has got to learn the same way. He will make mistakes, and eventually hopefully learn from them. When I saw Steven’s doctor, I was in a real state myself because of my lack of experience and understanding as to what’s happening to Steven. I stayed with her for one hour, which was a non-scheduled meeting, so I must have upset her schedule that morning. Later that day Steven was angry that I had spoken to his doctor. It’s difficult to explain, but we all cry most days, sometimes with happiness that Steven has done something different whatever it is, other times we cry through frustration and anger at what we’ve been put through. After my conversation with the doctor, she must have formulated a plan of some sort, because on Friday afternoon, Steven came out of physio’ carrying the doctor’s report which we’ve seen many times. It seems he was given this report so that he could realise why we’re so careful and protective of him. Steven was so upset, because for the first time, he’d seen evidence of what an awful state he was in. The report is far too complicated for my limited Spanish, and I can’t trust the Google translator with such a large document. I just hand it in to Solicitor etc. For the first time even we were surprised at the report’s contents. Steven died once at the scene of the accident, he died 3 times in the ambulance from Torrevieja to Benidorm, and he died again once more at Benidorm. We were never told this, or we were in too much of a state to understand the enormity of it all. Further to that, we have learned of extra injuries. On top of what we knew, he also suffered a broken jaw, fractured left elbow, collapsed stomach, and most of his back and shoulder muscles on the left side were dislocated. His jaw and elbow are like his ribs, they can’t be put right by dressings etc, they have to get better themselves. This all helps us all to understand what’s happening to Steven. The broken neck, the broken jaw, and the moved muscles all explain his difficulty in moving his neck, and why it’s difficult for him to speak. He is trying so hard to get better, but his brain and body are against him. I think it’s going to take a lot of physio’ to get him back together. Ref’ the broken neck, the break was one of the outer bones, away from the spinal cord which was broken, but that’s where muscles are attached, no wonder he has problems. He is getting limited movement in his left foot, but if he curls his toes under his foot, it becomes painful. Most of his pain now comes from his hip. But I’m sure the more exercise he does, the quicker these pains will go.
Best regards, Terry

1 comment:

  1. Omg, I knew that things where bad from what you had told me, but this is so much more then that. I'm speechless. A huge hugs to steven and all of you.

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