September 21, 2008

Today as we were visiting with Curtis, I asked him if he would like to try to play his guitar again. He said, "Sure, I can do that." As we got him all set up with pick and guitar in hand, he struck a chord and strummed the strings like it was just so natural for him to do! We watched as he carefully changed chords and strummed across the strings several times, really studying the instrument. He even lifted his head up and closed his eyes a couple of times as he was playing and listening to the sound of his guitar. When we asked him how it felt to play the guitar, he said that it felt really good! It is truly amazing how this is just coming back to him and how willing he is to keep trying to regain those skills he has. Later, I was showing him the pictures I had taken of him playing the guitar, and I asked him what chords he was playing in each picture, he was able to tell me exactly what they were!

Just on Friday, the recreation therapist brought by two games for Curtis to play. Out of the games Sorry or Chess, Curt chose to play Chess. The therapist asked Curtis to set up the board game, and without being told or reminded what the pieces were what or where each piece went, he started to pick them up and place them on the appropriate starting places on the board. Then the two of us proceeded to play our game of chess. It was really fun because I could see how quickly the game came back to him. Most of the time he remembered the movement of the pieces, and there were only a couple of times Becky, the therapist, had to remind him which way a piece would move. The game took us a whole hour to complete, and of course he beat me! I was told that the fact that Curtis could stay attentive for that length of time is quite unusual for brain injury patients at this point in the recovery process.

Also, last week on Monday we sat in with Curtis' speech therapy session. The therapist challenged him with several different reasoning puzzles. The puzzles gave a pattern, but with one piece of the pattern removed. The object was to chose the correct fit to complete the pattern out of six different choices. The problems started off basic and progressed to more difficult. Curtis did so well at this task and was able to answer almost all of them correctly (I think he was given about 30 or so problems, and only missed about three). The therapist said that Curtis has a great capablitity for reasoning, which is a great thing to see at this place in recovery.

However, Curtis' does have a limitation is his short-term memory. He has difficulty recalling the events of the current day or even the days past. He also has trouble recalling the current date or the location where he is. This is common from brain injury, and the therapist is working to find ways to help Curt's short term memory. The other thing that Curt has difficulty with is coming up with the correct word to express what he wants to say. The therapist is also working with him on ways to help him with word retrieval and recall. It is part of the process and hopefully, it will improve in time, so we are happy to see that they are working alot with Curtis here on these things.

Renee