Yeah, I know I post a lot of pics of Rebecca sleeping, but I just love to look at her when she is snoozing. She's a big fan of relaxing with her arms folded behind her head. On the mornings when I am going to Casa Colina, I get up before Ramy. Rebecca usually wakes up about the time he gets up, and she likes to relax in our bed and watch television. This morning, Ramy and I were both getting dressed, and we got such a kick out of watching Rebecca, propped up on a mountain of pillows with her arms behind her head, the sheet tucked under her armpits, watching The Wiggles, and grinning as though she didn't have a care in the world. She has a talent at making herself completely comfortable.
Rebecca is currently obsessed with the Baby Einstein animal flash cards that she got sometime back. She recently discovered them again, after they had been in her bookshelf for awhile. She loves to go through them, look at the pictures, point to the animal and say to me, "Whassat, Mama?" and then pretend to read the info on the back of the card, before she tosses the card over her shoulder and goes on to the next one. She is also far more interested in telling me what sounds the animals make than in repeating the name of the animal to me. She's been enjoying fresh strawberries these last few days too - I think she has eaten about a quart of them since the weekend. I made her some chicken vegetable noodle soup on Monday, and she is funny when we feed it to her. She follows up the first bite with a loud, "MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmm!" What a funny girl she is.
I was at Casa Colina yesterday and today. I saw three patients yesterday on the inpatient unit and did brief neuropsych screens (2 hours of neuro tests) on them. I had a very lovely gentleman use a few expletives to tell me that he had absolutely no interest in learning about how his brain was working, because he knew his memory was less than stellar, and his doctors knew his brain was...uh, not functioning at its most efficient. I paraphrased, of course, and used words that are a little more accepted in polite society, but that was the gist of what he was telling me. Of course, this was only after he had just told me that the current year was 1982, that the season we were currently in was winter, and that we were located in Idaho, which had been immediately preceded by him telling me that he hadn't noticed any changes in his memory or thinking abilities since his injury and that he did a lot of speed in his younger days. Thankfully, my other two were not only cooperative but motivated! You never know what you're going to walk into on the inpatient unit - last week, a patient I was testing started spitting on the floor in the middle of the interview. Then today I was doing intermediary assessments (3-5 hours of testing) at the Transitional Living Center. The patients there are medically stable and are generally getting ready to go home and are just learning how to live with their new disability or are getting more hours of daily therapy than you get in outpatient. So there is less kookiness, but often incredibly interesting injuries and sets of deficits. Last week, I tested a guy whose injury to his brain left him so that he didn't recognize anything that was processed by his left hemisphere (so anything on the right side of his body or seen with his right eye). If he looked at his right arm, he had no idea it was his. By the time I saw him, he'd been taught skills to compensate for that lack of processing somewhat, but when I asked him to draw a circle, he drew a perfect half circle, leaving off the right half. That's something you don't see every day!
The most important thing I've learned thus far in this neuropsych experience is that you shouldn't ever damage your brain. Okay, folks? It will prevent a lot of bad stuff and hours of testing with someone like me.
My religion class is completely heinous. I'm tired of being in exile and I hope we all get to the Promised Land soon. The names of all the different kings (Josiah, Ammon, Hezzekiah...) were in my dream last night. Luckily, I have found a way to get onto the internet in our classroom, although we're only supposed to be able to access the intranet over the wi-fi. I will admit that although it appears that I'm taking notes on the septuagint and the dietary laws written about in Deuteronomy while I'm typing away on my laptop, I'm really shopping on BabyGap.com, looking for college friends on Facebook, and transferring money from one bank account to another. Luckily, I only have 5 more classes to go!
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