Little Miracles

Thanks to all of you who were able to fast for dad on Sunday! He is making improvements everyday. His speech continues to improve and I think he is beginning to see it as well. He is getting into the new routine with the outpatient therapy in American Fork, and it is going well. I was working on one of the pages with dad's speech therapy last Thursday, and he was only able to understand 3 or 4 out of 25 different questions on the page. Today he got 19 out of the 25. Quite an improvement. On Tuesday when I was getting started with dad, he picked his right arm up off his lap and set it on the arm rest of his wheelchair. I said "Dad! Did you notice what you just did?!" He said no. I told him and asked him to do it again, and he repeated it. Today he was able to do it over and over again. He is just about able to make a fist with his right fingers as well. It is so exciting to see movement coming back into his arm and hand that has just been limp and lifeless for 4 months. We also put his wheelchair away on Tuesday and he has only used it once since then. He gets more confident everyday with his walking. When we went to a routine dr. appointment today, we had forgotten the handicapped sticker for the rearview mirror so I had to park a little ways away, so I went to get the car and dad was supposed to wait for me, but he walked himself over to where I moved the car and got himself down over the curb as well before I could get to him. Before I had dad get on his stationary bike to ride today, I told him if he did 15 minutes I wouldn't make him do the dishes with me. He said he was only going to do 11 minutes, so I told him that was fine, but he would still have to help me with the dishes when he was through riding the bike. When I checked the bike's time when he said he had had enough, it was on 15 minutes and 9 seconds.