As Day Fifty-Two ends, I learned a new concept from the S.L.P. therapist that helped me a lot in understanding Jenny and what to consider for myself moving forward. Jenny has post-traumatic amnesia and will often be disoriented or confused. Jenny might be able to remember Point A and Point B but the path to get from one point to the other may have another memory inserted in. Even though it never happened in real life, to Jenny, it did happen within in her mind and memory.

It finally made sense to me because Jenny would often say memories that do not or cannot link up together but insists they happened. One example is that she remembers she worked in Taiwan but when told she is currently in Canada she would say she drove to Canada on a roadtrip. We had taken a roadtrip together many years back but that was across Canada towards Banff, Alberta. Jenny inserted that road trip memory to an even older memory, and made the claim that she drove across the ocean from Taiwan to Canada which is impossible, but in her mind, it is real.

At Occupational Therapy today, we discovered that even though Jenny cannot open her right eyelid, she can still see through the eye itself. This is absolutely monumental because it means the actual optic nerve was not severed. She can see out her eye but she cannot control the eyelid. However, her right eye is very off-centered and leans heavily towards the right. She cannot control it back to center. We tested the vision in her right eye by blocking her left eye and had her manually open the right eyelid with her left hand. She can see clearly from it, including numbers, colors and shapes.

At Physiotherapy, they continue to test her right arm and it’s current condition. Her right hand cannot make a fist and she cannot rotate her arm palm upwards or palm downwards. She cannot move her arm right and left with her elbow being anchored. She cannot raise her hand past her shoulder. She cannot straighten her right arm at all. If she moves just a little bit further from her current limit, it causes her immense pain. I myself cannot push Jenny to this pain, but the Physiotherapists can. She must go through this pain to recover, or else she will lose her arm function.

As Day Fifty-Three ends, Jenny still is not accepting of Riverview as her new home. She struggled once again with Speech and Language Pathology today. She was not able to match even 50% of the shown words to their pictures and she was not able to follow simple instructions given for basic activities. It was quite a struggle today and after the session she began saying things like

“Why am I here?”

“Why am I like this?”

Which breaks my heart. Jenny was very obviously having a rough start to the day.

At Occupational Therapy & Physiotherapy today, they both continue to push Jenny’s body forward. The pain during the exercises causes her immense pain, but it’s their job and I admire them for it.

However, the pain of her exercises do not compare to the pain Jenny experiences in the night when her body starts recovering. It’s always at the same time frame every night, between 6:15pm and 7:00pm Jenny begins sobbing and crying due to the pain of her body recovering. I know she has an extremely high pain tolerance as we both go to the same Registered Massage Therapist. For those who cannot recall from one of my previous posts, the last time I asked our R.M.T. the difference in pain thresholds between us they rated my pain threshold at a meek 2.5/10 whereas Jenny is an 8/10. Jenny has over three times the pain threshold as I do so I know my mind cannot begin to imagine the pain she experiences every single night. I cannot leave her side as she is crying in pain but the pain also keeps her up late into the night which means I’m kept up late into the night as well. This means that because I cannot leave her side during these moments, I myself also cannot find much time to rest. All of this occurs in succession as a terrible series of events because following the accident and the aftermath of due diligence my life responsibilities quickly begin to snowball out of control. Though I brazenly push forward now, little did I know this continued lack of sleep every night would eventually burn me out of my own life.

But that is for the future Steven to find out.

For today, Jenny was having a very rough time so I offered her something she never expected. After all her therapy sessions were done for the day I asked Jenny if she wanted to visit the chapel at Riverview. I had only found out they had a chapel today and it truly came at a great time of need. Jenny said yes so I pushed her wheelchair to the chapel located on the far opposite end of the complex. She asked to be left alone for a few minutes and I obliged but managed to take one picture of her before I left.