We just finished up the first quarter of the school year and while it's been a grind, the results are well worth it. Emily finished the quarter with a B in CU Literature & Composition, B+ in Precalculus, and A's in everything else (Creative Writing, Resource Study Skills, and Student Assistant). All of her teachers have been incredibly supportive. Precalculus has been the toughest class, which has been hard on Emily emotionally because math has always been so easy and one of her favorite subjects. It's been tough for her to accept that it's harder now and she needs more help, but her work ethic is an inspiration for all of us. Under her Individual Education Plan (IEP) she's entitled to modified, shortened assignments and tests. She'll have none of that - so, for example, over the last 2 days she's done 35 trigonometry problems just like everyone else in the class!

Emily's biggest struggle has been retrieving the information she's learned. She's obviously learning the material, but she needs a little one-on-one cueing to retrieve it. This has been a big challenge with tests, but now that she's being allowed to complete her tests at home where she's less stressed, she's doing much better. Her last test she had the second highest score in the entire class. Ken's been reading Trigonometry and Calculus for Dummies so that he can help her.

To keep up with everything, Ken helps her with math, and I help with her lit and creative writing. Generally I help her organize her thoughts before she starts writing a paper or story and do clean up editing. None of her classes are light loads - she's already read/done papers/taken exams on Equus, The Collector, and King Lear in lit. Her next big project for lit is a thesis paper on King Lear. Her lit class is actually a CU class taught at DSA - not too shabby for a young woman who couldn't communicate 16 months ago. For creative writing she's written 8 short stories with strong female characters and read another 12 short stories in addition to regular poetry, story and other assignments in class.

Em continues to recover physically as well. We're now a wheelchair free house. Em uses her wheelchair at school and still uses the stair lift at home, but walks the rest of the time. We're getting braver about walking other places too - we just need to be realistic about distances so she doesn't get too tired. She did 1/2 mile on the treadmill a couple of weeks ago. She's almost up to 1 mph on the treadmill (her 1/2 mile was 40 minutes at 0.8 mph). The treadmill is excellent for gait work because it forces her to keep taking steps - she can't pause on her good leg. Speaking of good leg, her right leg is strong enough now it's actually easier for her to go up and down stairs leading with her right leg. She's also mastered up/down stair-over-stair if she's got a hand rail.

Her right pupil is starting to react to light, which is another big development. She's still working on using both eyes to focus and read. She has single vision in every direction except up/right and down/left.

We're still working hard on her right arm. She gets up at 6:00 a.m. every day to do 30-45 minutes of exercises with her neurodynamic arm/hand brace. She's now able to pull her right arm up and straighten it back out on her own. We're seeing some ability to grasp with the right hand immediately after working with the brace.

I'm currently reading "My Stroke of Insight" by Jill Bolte Taylor. Jill suffered a catastrophic stroke at 37. We met several folks at Craig that had suffered strokes because of the same congenital artery deformity that caused her stroke. It took her 8 years to make a full recovery. One of her mantras in the book is, "I will recover even if it takes 20 years." Emily hates thinking in those kinds of timeframes, but we're determined. Whatever it takes. Jill also urges you to try to keep your focus on what you've accomplished, not what you've lost. That's a tough one sometimes, but it's really the only way to keep going.