Onward - ever onward .........

Douglas continues to do well with lots of little improvements that, in the great scheme of things, add up to a steady move forward.
Needless to say it's all too slow for Doug but I do believe he is now recognising that it does all take time and railing about lack of progress can change very little.
He is generally in very good spirits and, when the mood takes him, his sense of humour really reasserts itself. The other night I happened to make a remark about rather onerous loo cleaning duties in our caravaning days and that really set him off!! We all ended up in fits of laughter .... so much so that the nurses were coming over to share the hilarity!!

His next eye appointment is still to come on the 5th December and, as he says, we'll see what happens, but hopefully it will be good. He is resigned to the possibility he'll have to wear specs at least for the medium term, and if this improves his sight, he's happy to go along with it.

Swallow tests are now routine and the latest one had him, at long last, consuming coffee, albeit thickened to a custard consistence. He was in seventh heaven at this .... as he says he's a coffee junkie!! It's notiable that his mental arithmetic goe a bit skewy at this point .... his speech therapist ALWAYS counts more spoonfulls than Doug does!! :-) (His swallow response is very good but does need a bit of improvement before any attempt at solids and no-one is making any predictions about this just yet.
He is due for a full scale swallow test using fluoroscopy to investigate more fully how things are working but we haven't a date for this yet.
The main reason for this is that the left vocal chord is still not working properly (hence the rather guteral voice) although the right chord is doing its best to compensate but he still cannot cough in the same way we all do (seems to need a rapid closure of the chords).

Feeling in the left side of his face is slowly returning and now extends from the jaw line up to the cheek bone. Makes shaving a bit easier for him!! Hopefully this signals the possibility of a return of some muscular activity and, if so, it'll also help with his swallow and maybe his blink control.

His physio and occupational therapy continues with the focus on balance, standing and walking and in spacial awareness. He seems to be doing well at all these and his 'I'm just rubbish' comments do seem to have diminished in frequency. The staff are very strong on weekly and monthly goal setting and I guess this helps greatly in giving him a sense of achievement.

The gift from all his friends of a Sony DVD player (when he was in the Western) is really appreciated and he uses it a great deal now - even to the extent of enjoying biking DVDs (which shows great resilience I reccon).
He still has short periods of high emotion - sad news or kindness - but he can get through these without too much difficulty - all credit to him!!

As you can imagine, Sheena and I are much lighter in mood as a result, although we still find ourselves saying ' now don't get too confident in continued improvement .........'

Keep up the visits .. Doug really does love to see all his friends (even though you might have a problem getting a word in edgewise!!!)

Iain