Hello and good morning all, tuesday, 14th of October, 10:22am here in sunny Izmir, Turkey.

I've been to my grandma on saturday and on sunday and spent some 2-3 hrs with her with my mother and our nurse, Cevriye. She's a very disciplined nurse(caretaker) who had her degree from Bulgaria, a very decent woman of character, and is really taking good care of my grandmother. Grandma too loves her back it seems which is amazing for us. Mom feels so lucky to have bumped into Cevriye hn.

Anyway, I have worked with grandma on the turkish alphabet and wrote down names on a cardboard, see if she could differentiate the names which I told her really slowly, puttting stress on each letter, sylabble and then make her show them to me on the board. Well she did think a lot, but she did learn to spot the names from our family. The outcome is that she's learning and we really can't know how much she does know. Sandy gave us a great idea of cutting out photos of vegetables, fruits and furniture from gorcery store ads, leaflets, I will do that within this week and group the photos and show her, and pronounce every letter if need be to make her understand. She got tired after a 45min lecture I'd say, and she showed me to stop.

Her gestures are amazing, but the meaning we put on her gestures are somewhat bluryy, when I say she did not understand, mom says she did and then I need to pull back and say ok... =)) it's all a funny phase I'd suppose. One thing is clear, grandma's brain is lighting up, she wants to say something, she opens her mouth, but can't say, then she's not *beep* but she is amazed why no sound comes out of her mouth. When she laughs, she laughs with a sound for the last 2 weeks, but then when it comes to telling something, or let me say trying to tell us something, she holds my hand, and thinks how she can make that sound, then I try to guess what she wants to say, and we end up laughing after 10s of trials...hahaha...we'll find a way...mom and the nurse were amazed to see how I worked with grandma on the alphabet, but I just felt I needed to do it...and I hope it works.

Meanwhile, we tried to stood her up (and a note to Sandy, the PT said she need not a gait belt, I've asked that, thanks a million for your hint on that) and make her take 3-4 steps, she couldn't, she just let herself, her weight on us, maybe she did not want to walk...but she does walk with her PT, 10-15 steps forward, then back to her bed. Instead we made her sit on a couch and have her non-moving leg stand on a small chair, she was comfortable and enjoyed the conversation we had with her. She is still laughing most of the time. =)

Her airbed under her bed is removed last week, since she now spends most of her time on a couch or on the bed sitting, I believe her back and rear side is getting better, thank god she did not have any bruises on her back for the time she spent in bed was a nightmare to everyone, making her change sides every 2 hrs...etc...

I told grandma that I will bring some cooked fish, a seabass sometime later, draw a fish on the board to let her easily understand what I was talking about and she said "ooooo..." with a gesture that meant "of course I know what a seabass is my boy" ...hahaha...again laughter...

She refused to be taken to the fair via her wheelchair, the big garden of trees and flowers in Izmir, the one and only green left in the city centre...we'll do that on a weekday since sunday was really crowded there.

that's all on our end for the past 3-4 days.

Hope everyone is healthy and happy out there, whoever reads this and whoever shares information on these blogs.

enjoy every breath! it's so amazing and wonderful...well I got to tell this to myself at times

cheers,

Cagin