She's talking! Trach, demolished! Fixators, not quite....

Yesterday was a very good day for Clare, but a very frustrating day for the staff and us. There were difficulties with the insurance company and miscommunications about her appointment with her orthopedic doctor including details about transport, the location of the appointment, and the purpose of the appointment-- we thought she would get her external pelvic fixators out, but found out it was just for an x-ray. Thankfully there are people here whose sole job is to coordinate things like this, so it all worked out in the end; but boy was it frustrating in the middle of the chaos!

The x-ray on her pelvis looked good, so she has a definite appointment to get them out on Tuesday (thank goodness!) We did find out that once the fixators are out she will not be able to put any weight on her right leg for 6 more weeks, which was a slight bummer because physical therapy was hoping to have free reign once they were out. It will still be nice to have them out so she's more comfortable sitting up.

One thing that did go as planned was that she got her tracheostomy out! She now has a small hole in her neck that the doctor expects to close up in a couple days, but after the soreness is gone hopefully she will want to talk more. She talked quite a bit yesterday morning. She worked with speech therapy and said many things like her full name, birthday, all her brothers' and sisters' names, her parents' names, her dogs names, named many animals, colors etc. Whenever she talked she would start coughing and she said it hurt to talk, so after speech therapy she tried her hardest not to talk when she didn't have to. She did talk to my mom on the phone though, my dad put the phone to her ear and she said "Hi Mom" then had a conversation back and forth for about a minute.

We have been told to expect some memory loss, but so far we haven't found anything she doesn't remember- from childhood things to things that happened in the months before the accident. Even her short term memory seems to be mostly intact. When we went to the doctor's office she asked why she was there, and after Kris told her she was getting an x-ray she didn't ask again. We were told to expect we'd have to repeatedly tell her things, but she seems to remember things after telling her once or twice.

Everyone keeps saying they are amazed by her progress, so amazed that her admission to a rehab facility has been moved up (with some "encouraging" from the insurance company) to Monday!! She is definitely a fighter and wants to do everything the therapists ask her to. We are so proud of her :)