January 8th, 2008

Exciting news!! Well this year for matt has started off really good. He started back at Sharp rehab on Monday, he also had an evaluation with Kaisers speech therapy. It was a very busy day for him. Let's start with speech first...so again we were told that kaiser doesn't really have experience with patients like Matt, but she was able to give us good ideas on how to strengthen matts tongue muscles. She also said it was a good idea to continue feeding Matt through his mouth a few times a day little bits at a time. We stressed to her that sharp is able to get Matt to the next step and out of what we call the grey area (which kaiser doesn't know). Then we can take him back to speech at kaiser and they can take over. Our fingers were crossed as we continued to make our way to sharp for Pt. While we were at pt we got a call from kaiser saying Matt had been referred to sharp for speech!!!! Praise God for that! So he starts Monday!
Now with pt he's still I think getting use to the way they do things there. but he is still being responsive. in fact yesterday he rode a bicycle!! I'm sure all your mouths just dropped like mine did when his mom told me last night. What they did was pulled a bicycling machine up to his wheel chair that strapped his feet on the petals. They set it on a timer and Matt started pedaling! If he slowed down they would just tell him to speed up and keep going! And sure enough he did! He went 16 minutes of cycling! The therapists said its one thing you'll never forget how to do. His OT had him putting objects through holes in a board. He does very well with that as well as pointing out colors, pictures, numbers and also flash cards are another great way for him to identify the diffeneve between two objects.
All I can say is that Matt is in there. And everyday he's getting stronger! Never under estimate the power of God and his miracles. God has an amazing plan Matt, we just have to be patient and another time for healing.
Some things I want to share with all of you are the things Matt does everyday for us. If you hold up two shirts and ask him what one he wants to wear he points to the one he wants. If you hand him a comb and tell him to comb his hair he will. If you hand him the tooth brush and tell him to help with brushing his teeth he will. If you say goodbye he will go to shake your hand or give you knuckles. If tou lean over and give him a hug and ask him to hug you back he will lift his right arm and gig tou back. If you tell him to give you a squeeze he will. When I ask him to give me a kiss he puckers up his lower lip. He does all these amazing things! He's awake everyone! He's alert! He is still healing but...he's getting there. This is something we all wanted 9 months ago. He's giving us hope. I promised Matt the day he came into that hospital holding onto barely anything that I would do whatever it took to get him back on his feet. I won't quit on him. And he won't quit on us. I have really good feelings for 2009! Love tou Matt, forever!!