An evening update on J

This afternoon I took the kids in to see J. As you’ll recall from this morning, things are starting to look up. She was a little tired when we arrived because she hadn’t really been able to get any sleep after lunch. [The post-lunch siesta is a most excellent concept, btw]. We had a walk down the corridor, looking at the fishtanks along the way (A points them out, raises his hand to point at them and utters “issshhh!”).

Two days ago she wasn’t able walk that distance without sitting down on the seat halfway along, and when we got back to her room she had to rest for 5-10 minutes. Today…. not only was she faster and more balanced with her walking, but she didn’t need to stop and rest along the way. It wasn’t a big speed increase, perhaps another half-metre/minute but when we’re looking at 7-8 metres in a minute, that’s noticeable. She plans to ask for a physio to come and assess her walking tomorrow.

One other thing she noticed about her walking is that two days ago she was unable to step over a vacuum cleaner hose unless she stopped, turned to face the wall and held on to the wall while she lifted one leg over and then the other. While there wasn’t a vacuum cleaner around today to test herself with, she reckoned she would be able to walk over its hose normally now. She’s going to ask the physio to help her figure out stairs too – we’ve got a few and you can’t really live in our house without having to go up and down them several times a day.

Food-wise, her appetite is coming back so much that tomorrow’s breakfast order includes bacon, and whatever she had for lunch today (which she vomited up a week ago) she wolfed down and was feeling rather hungry by afternoon-tea time. The appetite change really puts in stark perspective for us just how rotten she was getting since just before Easter when the migraine started to kick in.

The neurologist was very pleased at her progress, and told her that he thought she needed two good days before she could come home. While today was a better day than yesterday, it wasn’t up to “good”. I’m hopeful that if she can get another good night’s sleep (7-8 hours) tonight, then we might have got to the point where we can really see her coming home soon. It probably won’t be Sunday, but I’m optimistic (with good reason now, I believe) that we could have her home on Monday. We’ll have to start tapering off the various drugs that she’s on too … that’s going to be tedious.