Today we had the Dentist in the morning – not good.  Well, it went OK, but David really hates to go.  He had two new students working on him, and as is normal with David, all of the staff who have worked with him over the past month or so, came by at some point to chat and see how he was doing.  He can still make people smile and laugh with just a crooked smile or well placed laugh or yes or no.

Then home, and we had a great visit with a Ron McClain from The Parkmont School in Washington, DC.  David became friendly with Ron while he was at Burke, and he was in town and able to stop by on his way back to the train.  Again, David was very communicative without saying much, and we talked about a lot of DC gossip.  I have met Ron, but never spent time with him, so it was fun to get to know him better.

After the visit, I had some time before my TBI support group at Rusk, and David did some walking around the apartment.  He has been getting up regularly, just to take a spin around and get some exercise.  At the group, some of the discussion was about trouble motivating stroke and TBI survivors to continue to work when at home, and I told them that I found it was the opposite – David wants to work all the time, but sometimes I don’t have the energy.  I do it, but I just may not be as enthusiastic as he is.  The group was a lot of the same folks from last month, but it is good to go to and it gives you a lot of perspective.  Karin, the wife of Andrew who David and I met last week at the Young Stroke Survivor’s Group, and I talked about how great it was for David and Andrew to meet, but I confessed that David was a little thrown by the difficulty that he still has with walking and use of his arm.  This led to a frank discussion about expectations and goals for both the survivor and the caregiver.  I am going to work on writing some of those out for both of us, and we will discuss.  I also confessed to the group that one of my biggest fears is being able to keep David intellectually stimulated.  Working on that.  They all loved the idea of reading A History of the World in 100 Objects and tonights object was number 67, Icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

David has also talked to me about spreading out his visiting schedule a bit more.  Understandably he want to make sure that he doesn’t have days where there is just too much going on – like tomorrow!  Friday’s are busy days, so I have been asked to keep it down to one visit per Friday.