More progress!

I finished my dissertation proposal today!!! I sent it to my dissertation chair and co-chair for their feedback and commentsm so I'm anxious to hear back from them. Then it will just be a matter of making any (hpefully minor) changes they suggest and scheduling the presentation. The sooner the better, because I'm anxious to be able to fully focus on my internship applications. Although I haven't officially proposed my dissertation, the study has actually already begun. I already have 25 people in the study! And I finished designing the online portion of the study and had some friends of mine work as test subjects to be sure there weren't any kinks in the data collection or retrieval process before I send real subjects onto it. So I'm off to a good start. Hopefully everything will continue to go smoothly and no roadblocks will present themselves.

So, it was a busy but fast week here. Monday, my friend Julie came over with her baby girl Adelaide, who is completely precious. I wondered how Rebecca would react to a baby, especially when I held her. But she was totally fine with it. In fact, she loved to look at her and she stroked Adelaide's little arm and said sweetly, "Ohhhhhhhh" just the way she does with her baby dolls.

Tuesday, I was on the inpatient unit at the hospital, and I also went to a training session on traumatic brain injuries, which was very informative and interesting. Wednesday, I was at TLC and did testing on a gentleman who had had a deep brain stroke, on top of two previously-unrecognized ischemis strokes. Basically his brain had no more room for recovery, so this last stroke, which would have been debilitating on its own, obliterated his language abilities and right side sensory and motor stuff. This, of course, made it incredibly difficult to conduct any type of standardized testing with him! But we needed to determine if there was any comprehension left, if he had any reasoning abilities, if he could do any kind of sequencing, etc. It was a complicated case, so I was glad they gave it to me, because it speaks well of how competent they think I am. I also had to do some improptu therapy with a guy who said something in one of the groups that made people worry about him. My days at Casa Colina are very fast-paced and interesting, so that really makes the week fly by. Then today, I was at Loma Linda and in Redlands handling clinic and dissertation stuff.

I've been so busy with all my dissertation stuff and the reports for work that I haven't had much time to hang out with Ramy in the evenings or to watch any of the recent political conventions. So unlike me!

There are several people I know who could use your prayers right now - please continue to pray for Lisa Grubbs (she has begun her chemo/radiation treatments), a little boy from Fayetteville named Caleb who is also fighting cancer, and my friend Lucy's mom who had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago and who has had another heart failure episode today.