Speech

The next week Neal was at a Health South rehab hospital. I would get the kids off to school and rush to Scottsdale to spend the day with Neal. He had physical therapy, which went great, he was making improvements every day. Then occupational therapy, which was for his small motor skills, and basic need skills, like showering, tying shoes, eating, that sort of thing. That went pretty well. Then out favorite, speech! Neal had the best therapist ever. Her name is Laura Haney. She was so great. The only problem was Neal had no clue what was going on. Each day Laura would put a pipe and a spoon in front of Neal. Then she would ask him to point out the spoon, he got it wrong every time. She even mixed it up and asked him to point out the pipe, and then he would pick the spoon. She would ask, which one do you use to eat...pipe. Which one is bad for you...spoon. With out fail he got it wrong. That is when Neal was diagnosed with Apraxia and aphasia. Which means that Neal could not understand the words that were spoken to him, his brain would garble up the words and feed him gibberish. He also would think of things to say and and his brain would garble up the words so gibberish came out. It would have been funny, but to look at his face I couldn't. You could see the complete bewilderment on his face and the panic of being trapped in a body that could not understand or be understood. Neal's first word was Mom. Heather was one of the hardest words for him, because H is not a sound it is air, which is hard to figure out. Neal's brain slowly fixed his apraxia ( the one where you can't understand what others are saying) And that helped a lot. The aphasia still shows it's peculiar face once in a while. But by far Speech was and still in a way is his hardest trial.

Pureed Fish!

So time passed. Neal was not making much progress but then after about a week and half they took out his feeding tube! His feeding tube menu consisted of Ensure, which is an old persons drink that gives you all of the nutrients that you need with out having to chew. In the whole 7 year of our marriage up to that point I was not able to get Neal to gain weight. He weighed a whopping 155 pounds, which isn't that fun when I always weighed more than him while pregnant. So I played a little trick. I told the nurses to feed him 24 hour a day. And they did, he had the Ensure drip going all the time and sure enough Neal came out weighing 170!

But back to the story, Neal got the tube out and was given the wonderful delicacy of pureed food. Let me describe the art of pureed food. First, take whatever the rest of the patience are eating in the hospital, put the entree in the blender, add water, frappe and serve! Neal's first meal was.... wait for it..., wait for it..., fish! Let me tell you, nothing bets pureed fish! You all should try it! Especially after not eating any real food for 10 days. The double nasty thing about it was that if he didn't eat it they threatened to put the feeding tube back in. So Neal diligently ate it, along with a pureed roll (which when pureed makes it dough again) and a side of pureed veggies (remember your baby food days) Notice that you can not buy fish as a baby food option! With good reason.

I just read this post to My beloved Neal, and asked him if he thought it was funny, His reply..."um, I was listening, really, but see out my window, there was this squirrel and it jumped, sorry what did you say again?" Such is the life of a women whose husband had a stroke! And maybe even if they haven't.

During that time in the ICU, Neal was allowed to take the sacrament. I can not begin to describe what that was like. Neal was allowed one drop of water in his tongue and a tiny crumb of bread.

Most of my life I have spent being grateful for the Atonement because it was a way for us to be forgiven of our sins. When Neal had his stroke I came to appreciate a whole new aspect of the Atonement. Christ not only payed the price for sin, but he also suffered all of the heart ache, all of the pain and illness and all of the loneliness that any of us might have to endure in this life. He knew how Neal was feeling, He knew how I was feeling, neither of us were alone because He had felt these same feelings, and suffered these same pains. On that very sacred Sunday, Neal was given the Sacrament by a very dear friend named Dan. The spirit was so strong. And never was the Atonement more needed and felt in our lives as it was at that particular time. It is amazing how life's trials always lead us back to Christ if we let them.

I finally found out how to get my pictures onto the new computer, but since the story is about Neal, and he doesn't want my blog full of pictures of him, you get this. At least it is something.

Ok so it has been a while, but I am back a ready to tell our story. I think I ended with The first day at the hospital. Neal was pretty much a very good looking vegetable. He couldn't talk or move. The Doctors and Nurses would ask him questions, and he would just stare at then with frightened eyes.

My favorite question was, "Do you know who this lady is." Pointing to me, and he would look at them and shake his head no, no matter who asked him , the answer was always no. And at the same time, I was the one he kissed and held hands with, so I wondered if he wanted to hold hands and kiss all of the Nurses.

I later found out that he did know who I was, he just didn't understand the words that anyone spoke to him. So he would look at me with that frightened look that I interpreted as, " I don't have any idea who you are." In fact he was really thinking "Help me out Heather, I have no idea what these people are saying to me." It was a good 2 months before he could begin to understand the simplest words. Some times the simplest words are the sweetest!