We had an excellent meeting with our Craig therapy team on Tuesday and I think we've identified a plan for therapy and school that everyone supports and a vision for how we all can better communicate. In a nutshell, we're hoping to use the next 10 months to complete Emily's 10th grade classes through a combination of homebound school, working with Craig's teacher, and the help and support of Mrs. Clark. One key component is getting Mrs. Dubrava, Ms. F-D and the DSA administration to allow Emily to audit her Creative Writing class at least two days a week starting in January. Her therapy team believes this would be a key part of continuing her therapy and slowly reintegrating her in the community. It's also key to beginning the process of evaluating whether or not Emily will be able to return to DSA full-time as an 11th grader in the Fall. Dr. Weintraub was specifically concerned that changing schools at this point in her recovery would be detrimental to Em, so we need to start sooner rather than later to see if we can make it work. Ken and I are relieved and happy that we were able to work through our issues with our Craig team. As Dr. Weintraub said, we've all become family and need to support each other.

Emily had a good week of therapy. She continued to work on her reading comprehension, which has improved significantly in just the last month. She also started to work on her longer-term retention of materials learned in reading comprehension exercises. She tried working with voice-recognition software, which we'll continue to explore as an option. She also did a lot of work on memory and fine-motor coordination. The biggest development was with her walking. Em did 72 feet in the parallel bars today with the best gait, control and balance that she's ever had. After that demonstration, she walked across the gym using first a cane and next a shopping cart. It's the first time she's walked any distance outside of the parallel bars in several weeks and she did very well. Celeste even gave Ken and I permission to start working with her on walking with a can for short distances at home - with help - and even suggested we try to get a loaner shopping cart for short neighborhood walks. Em was so happy with her progress.

This afternoon, even after a very long day at Craig, Emily had a wonderful visit with Mrs. Clark. They talked about what Emily's been reading, and Jana borrowed a book Emily recently finished and a copy of her as-yet incomplete horror novella to read. She'll plan to visit again soon to discuss the book and brainstorm with Emily how to finish her novella. She and Em also agreed on Emily's last contract to finish up her 10th grade Creative Writing - Emily is going to write 6 character descriptions based on her friends at Craig. She'll take pictures (by herself), write a sketch of what she knows about the person, and then describe how she would use them as a character in a story. I think it will be a really fun project. Mrs. Clark also gave Emily an assignment to write her an e-mail every day so she'll get back into the habit of writing regularly and, hopefully, get over her frustration with typing on the computer.

All-in-all a very good week.