Tuesday 20 November 2012

20th November 2012

Over the last weekend was the first anniversary of Steven leaving hospital. It was Steven who unknowingly reminded us of this, after a friend had said to him that he looked completely different to when he last saw him a few months ago. In that year he's made remarkable progress, and it's only when people see him locally and make comment, that we realise the differences to his looks and demeanour. We see the very small differences that other people can’t see, but other people see the accumulated result of all these improvements. One day whilst walking with Steven, and approaching someone coming the other way, Steven did a shoulder shuffle without changing his pace. A very small but important change, he's learning to do more than one thing at once. He did this without thinking, and without falling. At physiotherapy one day, he fell on his backside, hard, on the floor, missing the protection mats. This jarred all his muscles on his left hand side, and put them into spasm, so he's been unable to go to Tai Chi for a while until it all settles down. Steven has learned that, though he can read, he cannot read out loud, because he can only see and say about two words ahead, but ordinary silent reading he's fine. Not a huge problem, but it does show how he can't do some things together with something else. This is how he is with his Spanish/English translation, he used to be very quick, but now much slower. Things that we take for granted, he's having to re-learn everything, and there's the frustration. I honestly don't know where he gets his patience from. Best regards Terry