May 14, 2004

 

Stevie made some strides yesterday. 

 

For the first time she interacted with one of her fellow patients.  At dinner, she directed me to a particular dinner table.  She began talking to the other person at the table.  When I started to cut up her potatoes she asked me to stop.  When I interjected a comment into the flagging conversation, she nicely asked me to butt out. 

 

From earlier in the day, the nurses recounted an incident that is so typically Stevie.  After therapy while waiting for lunch, the patients are required to stay up and not go back to bed as many are want to do.   Stevie being wheelchair bound was set in front of the nurses’ station.  Noticing she had slyly disappeared, they began a search – this is a locked area so she was safely within the ABI (acquired brain injury unit).  They found her in a bed – not her own bed.  She had wheeled into an empty patient room, found a pair of scissors, cut her locked belt and climbed into bet.  They got her up, put on a new belt and whisked back out to the nurses’ station.  After lunch she was positioned beside the nurses’ station waiting for her next therapy.  When the therapist came to get her she was gone.  This time she had gone to her room, cut her belt and gotten back into her own bed. 

 

Both these episodes are, in my non-medical opinion, cause for excitement and hope.