The Lord prepares us for the trials ahead.
It is amazing the way the Lord goes before us, He know what we need even before we ask Him. This has been so true in terms of John. About a year ago Naomi lent me a book called the brain that changes itself, it was a book about brain plasticity. The idea that the brain is not hardwired and once one part is damaged the other parts can take over and be trained to develop new connections. I was very excited about this idea, I realised that a lot of the work we had done with Alex had used brain plasticity. The first thought I had ,when I realised that John's brain had been damaged was , we will re-train his brain he will get better, we can do this. The strange thing is I change in my outlook from hour to hour, one moment I am despairing and the next I feel we can do this with God's help. John is experiencing the same up and downess, one minute he feels he can beat this and the next minute he feels he will never get better. He has been struggling spiritually since the stroke happened, he has struggled to read the Bible and pray and when he had the stroke he felt lost and has felt no real sense of the Lord's presence. Our pastor has just been to visit and has talked through all of this, reassuring John that he wouldn't desire the Lord's presence if he wasn't a true Christian. This feeling of lostness has been as much of John's trial as the stroke itself, but John feels there are valuable lessons to be learnt that may one day enable him to comfort others.
As soon as we had got through the weekend we felt we had to get to work on John's brain things had to be done very slowly because John was suffering with severe headaches and he had painful ulcers on his leg that were leaking. I am reading a book that is authored by a neurologist who had a stroke at 37 and had recovered. I realised from reading this book that the losing the sense of self is quite common during a stroke. I also realised it was important to start learning at the level that John was at and to work up, even if this meant starting at a toddler level in some things. She said it is important to let a person who has had a stroke have as long as they need to find the words because that is how they reconnect the neurons. it is also important to allow the brain dictate when it needs sleep.
We started by asking how many months are in a year, days in a week etc. This has been so difficult for John he keeps saying there are 30 months in a year, Alice and Esther think it's hilarious and John takes it in good spirit. Here is a conversation that happened earlier.
Me-How many months on a year.
John-30
Me- Name the 30 months then. (This was Esther's suggestion because he has been saying 30 all week and she thought it would help him to see it wasn't 30)
John- April
Me-Start with January
John- January isn't 30
Me- I'll ask again, how many months in a year.
John-30
By this time we are all rolling about laughing, we realised John had taken the question to mean we wanted to know which months had 30 days in.
We are trying to do some cardiovascular exercise every day, along with some balancing exercises. We are using Audiblox which is a programme that helps to train the memory and uses physical movement to help the brain make connections. We are using a lot of throwing and catching to help bring John's language on. When we have finished with some of these exercises we can see John is actually speaking better and looks more himself. The effects are not permanent at the moment although John is improving every day and last night he managed to say a short prayer before we went to sleep. He managed to read Frog and Toad are friends this morning which is a big breakthrough. We are so grateful to all our friends who are praying for us at this time and we continue to need your prayers as we throw ourselves into this re-education programme.
As soon as we had got through the weekend we felt we had to get to work on John's brain things had to be done very slowly because John was suffering with severe headaches and he had painful ulcers on his leg that were leaking. I am reading a book that is authored by a neurologist who had a stroke at 37 and had recovered. I realised from reading this book that the losing the sense of self is quite common during a stroke. I also realised it was important to start learning at the level that John was at and to work up, even if this meant starting at a toddler level in some things. She said it is important to let a person who has had a stroke have as long as they need to find the words because that is how they reconnect the neurons. it is also important to allow the brain dictate when it needs sleep.
We started by asking how many months are in a year, days in a week etc. This has been so difficult for John he keeps saying there are 30 months in a year, Alice and Esther think it's hilarious and John takes it in good spirit. Here is a conversation that happened earlier.
Me-How many months on a year.
John-30
Me- Name the 30 months then. (This was Esther's suggestion because he has been saying 30 all week and she thought it would help him to see it wasn't 30)
John- April
Me-Start with January
John- January isn't 30
Me- I'll ask again, how many months in a year.
John-30
By this time we are all rolling about laughing, we realised John had taken the question to mean we wanted to know which months had 30 days in.
We are trying to do some cardiovascular exercise every day, along with some balancing exercises. We are using Audiblox which is a programme that helps to train the memory and uses physical movement to help the brain make connections. We are using a lot of throwing and catching to help bring John's language on. When we have finished with some of these exercises we can see John is actually speaking better and looks more himself. The effects are not permanent at the moment although John is improving every day and last night he managed to say a short prayer before we went to sleep. He managed to read Frog and Toad are friends this morning which is a big breakthrough. We are so grateful to all our friends who are praying for us at this time and we continue to need your prayers as we throw ourselves into this re-education programme.
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- Beth