Every once in a while I return to the Rancho Los Amigos Cognitive Recovery Scale just to gage where or if Vernon has advanced in his neurological function.  Basically the scale shows us the stages of recovery for a Traumatic Brain Injury. As a general rule, he longer the person is unconscious, the longer the rehabilitation process. The last time I mentioned this was perhaps 6 weeks or so ago and Vernon was, in my opinion, between a stage 3-4 (there are 10 stages, according to the link above.) Now I would say he is between a 4-5.

But this is very exciting! We have reached the point I had been warned about before where the patient might get so frustrated a their state, they would yell and swear out of frustration or confusion.  I was told several rather entertaining stories about others experiencing this, and now I guess our turn has come.

Fortunately, so far, Vernon has been keeping his language relatively polite, but he did yell at me and call me a “Pill”  for keeping him from pulling out his IV again.  (Could be worse!) He also got mad at me when I wasn’t having him put back in the wheel chair to go with me. And he gets frustrated when I tell him his legs aren’t working.  “Yes they are! I CAN walk! Stop being so horrible to me.”

You can see the dark look in his eyes below. Oh the irony that he has never looked so healthy—and like the man I remember.

At least he WANTS to be moving now. At least he doesn’t want to stay in bed all day anymore, even if for the most part, he has to.  Its going to be the desire to get up and move out of there that will give him the motivation to keep working hard.  And I can see he is just starting to recognize these things.

Though he seemed to remember the accident when he first started talking a couple weeks ago, he hasn’t accepted that since. I have to tell him every day how he got to the hospital and why he is there and whenever I mention “the Accident” he refuses to believe me. Sometimes he gets quite upset: “There was no accident. Stop LYING to me!” He hasn’t come up with another reason he is there. I’d like to hear what he comes up with, it should be pretty creative.

One great thing is that they are keeping the cap on his trach now.  It makes it a bit more difficult to talk, but it also means that in a few more days, if all goes well, the trach may be removed completely and the hole in his throat will be able to heal.  After that, I believe the next step will be Vernon’s learning to eat solid food again.  At this point, he doesn’t seem to have an appetite or an interest in even talking about food.

Other than this, new developments are being able to hold conversations for much longer, and getting fixated on words, names, or memories just outside his reach. But this too, I’m sure, is part of the brain rewiring itself…and maybe the searching for the missing thought is more important than actually finding it.

“Happiness is good health and a bad memory.” —Ingrid Bergman

Update: Shortly after writing this entry, I talked to the night nurse at Kindred saying that earlier today Vernon had moved himself out of bed and was kneeling on to the floor…of course he couldn’t go anywhere, and he wasn’t hurt. But wow! I guess he has got a lot of his strength back…as well as his ‘get-up-and-go.”