Saturday, December 1st

Our first full week home has been filled with a few new challenges and an enormous amount of progress. During speech on Friday, Joanne had the therapist laughing at her sentences. "We do not do coffee brewing in the bathroom.", "The bathtub is like a large sink.", "The paintbrush had a lot of sage green paint.", and my favorite, "A spider, so lonely, turns its web." She continues to make us laugh with her word play. A few of the exercises she was working on was to list colors, fruit, vegetables, tools, etc. She doesn't just say, red, blue, green, she says, "plum red, carillon blue, sage green". The therapist keeps commenting on the fact that she consistently uses these descriptive words. No wonder she is having some trouble speaking, she is searching for the right adjective to express herself, classic Joanne. All three kids slept over the Grattagliano's, so we went to dinner together after an afternoon speech session. I think the children are going to look back at this time and think, "We had so much fun when mommy had stroke." Thank you to all our dear friends who have to willingly taken such good care of the children. The Boch's, the Diquattro's, the Hastings', the Hutzel's, the White's and more. I don't know how we would have gotten through this and continue to get through, without all your help and support. While Jo was in the hospital and rehab, I would be handed a list at the beginning of each week which told me who was taking the kids to school, who picked them up from school, who was doing homework with them and what time they would be coming home for dinner.

Joanne is beginning to have more control of her right hand. She is able to open and close her hand and has quite a good grip. The thumb is the last hold out, but seeing her progress, I am certain that is not too far behind. I will be taking one more week off before returning to work. I will still need to take a couple of random days off and leave a little earlier than usual for the next few weeks. I am so thankful that my office has been so supportive, understanding and compassionate about our situation. As hard as all of this has been, we have been blessed in so many ways by so many people. I have said several times that we can so clearly see God using this for His glory, but I wish he didn't choose my wife to do it. But...He knows best!

It's real.