(Originally posted March 6, 2009)

Thank goodness it's Friday! For the first time since this all happened, the fact that we're coming up on a weekend actually means something.

Eli has a really awful cough and doesn't have ISTEP testing today, so he's going to be staying home. Well, he's going to be staying home after we drop Leah off at preschool, drop J.J. off at physical therapy, go get my allergy shot, pick J.J. back up and drop the guys back off at home. I'm hopeful that I'll make it in to work by 10:00--wish me luck! So far Leah's only mildly sniffly and I've been popping Zicam like crazy to ward it off. I don't feel any worse, so I think it's working.

I just finished dealing out J.J.'s morning pills. I'm getting really good at this. I don't even need to consult his medication guide from his doctor anymore! We are extremely fortunate that almost all of J.J.'s meds are generics; two are even on the $4 list at Walmart. His monthly prescription cost is about $50. It could be so much worse.

I haven't updated on J.J.'s progress for a couple of days because I feel like I keep saying the same things. Physically he's basically back to where he was before the stroke. His speech is getting better all the time--yesterday evening I think there were only three times that he got stuck looking for a word and wasn't able to talk around it (talking around it=seeing if he can find a different word that means the same thing or describing the object he is speaking of. Nouns still seem to be the biggest problem, particularly proper nouns). His reading is getting better too. I had started reading signs and labels aloud in case he couldn't read them, and he has asked me to stop--he definitely can do those now. He's still having trouble reading the newspaper or books, although he has been able to read recipe books in the last day or so.

J.J. is spending large amounts of each day working on speech therapy exercises and working on his reading. He's been doing crossword puzzles for hours daily and we've played countless games of Uno (many of his speech therapy exercises are board or card games. Who knew they were so therapeutic?). He's committed himself to the idea that his full time job is to recover as quickly as he can. At this rate, I don't think he'll be off work for long.

Well, I need to get the trash out for pickup and start getting ready for work. If I can get in by 10:00, I'll be able to get seven hours done at the office today and will have only another hour to make up tonight. How awesome is that?