Avett bro's, state of the union

OH MY GOODNESS. Oh me, oh my. We just saw the BEST concert EVER. I first saw them at the Skunk (we're pretty sure). Tonight at the Peace Center we saw THE AVETT BROTHERS!!! Oh man was that good. The crowd in the stuffy ol' Peace Center spent the whole show on their feet. They started as a mostly bluegrass-y group, but apparently, over the years they've become a bluegrass-oriented hard rock-ish band. So my parents, for having sat through that rockin' good time, are no longer "old farts." They are now "young whippersnappers."

But I started this blog to let y'all know how my recovery is going, so let's get down to it. A state of the union address (wait, as a Southerner, shouldn't that be "state of the Confederacy"?):
1) This week ends my 1st week in the Hospital's Executive Skills 3-days-a-week class (I have no idea why I capitalized that). It's a group class with us 3 students & the teacher. What's said in that room stays in that room, to give us the freedom to say whatever. So I'll refer to my classmates as 484229e52 and 777147973. It turns out that 777147973 was also in a coma, so it's my 1st chance to see what similarities we have-- pretty cool.

2) Other therapies kinda come with getting into the Executive Skills class as a package deal. So although Occupational Therapy (I don't know why I have a thing about capitalizing tonight) was the 1st therapy that this hospital graduated me from, I'm back in it, and this time, it appears to be less about arm strength and more about getting skills that are employable.

3) Speech "therapy" is in the package deal. The first time I took speech therapy (with someone else), it was ALL ABOUT memory. Now I'm been through 4 or 5 speech therapists. Since it has become harder to be CLEAR in my speech, I have had to actively slow down the rate at which I speak-- not easy when your mind races at a million-miles-a-second as it does for us genius folks. ;-) The reason I originally put "therapy" in quotes is that since that therapist was doing absolutely nothing that had to do with my speech production, I eventually went to a private pay-my-own-way high school drama coach-- and he is very good, but he's on "pause" right now while I get this new hospital speech therapy figured out.

4) Vision therapy - I stopped that on Monday the 27th. (or maybe that was just pushing "pause"-- we'll see) I have 2 vision issues: A) I see double (issue with my brain, not my eyes-- which surgery can't correct-- or well, surgery CAN correct, but then I rather like this "living") The best they said they could do is bring the two images in line with each other ONLY WHEN I LOOK STRAIGHT AHEAD. As in, look at something out of the corner of my eye, and there's the double image again. B) The image from my right eye (that's the one that was injured) is slanted about 30 degrees. No glasses could correct THAT they say. "If I don't backslide, I won't be back," I say.

So all these therapies come with the Executive Skills class. This entire 1st week was just testing, so I won't see if they have any good ideas until next week. But the new speech therapist actually was testing my tongue strength in various (odd) ways, so they might ACTUALLY work on my speech (I know, crazy).