Update 131 from Rob and Linda

Hello to the Steve's Army nation. Hope this post finds you safe and well.

As we continue to progress in this journey we are continually reminded of what it takes to help Steve recover. While a part of the recovery process is therapy and exercise, another part of this recovery deals with positive thoughts, prayers and support. We experienced these first hand at the Golf Outing a few weeks ago. We would like to share some of our experiences with you.

We had the largest number of participants in the history of the outing. Teams from each rehabilitation activity that Steve attends were there. Teams that have been at every outing and new teams made up of one or more past participants with several first timers were there. One team somehow obtained an outing announcement and decided it was a good cause and signed up. Unknown to them, Steve was a college roommate of the brother-in-law of one team member and we attended his sister's wedding a few years ago.  We didn't make the connection until the morning of the outing.

We saw relatives that we have not seen in months or even years. For some wonderful reason they all thought that it was a good time to attend. Their presence made this outing all the more memorable.

Steve tried his best at public speaking this year and while it was a bit garbled the message got home:
"Thank you all for coming. I hope you have fun and that someone wins the car!"

On another note, we have decided to put more effort into correcting Steve's vision issue which is called Left Side Neglect. There is nothing wrong with his sight, eye or optic nerve; the issue is how the brain interprets what he sees. In extreme cases, a person might not know the left side of his body exists. He could have a pain in his left arm but not be able to tell anyone where it hurts. Steve's case is much less severe and deals with his brain thinking anything on his left is not important. Initially Steve would not be able to recognize anything that was left of center. Even if we pointed it out, he would not be able to tell you what the object was. His eyes would not go past the centerline. In order to view anything in the center he would turn his head completely to the left and his eyes would move to the right. About a year ago, we noticed in OT that Steve could reach out and match playing cards mounted on a board. That meant he could not only recognize the card but also that he could move his eyes to the left. This was a major accomplishment and we put some effort into continuing that type of therapy.  While we feel we made the best choices at that time, he has improved to a point that we now feel that we can address this more aggressively. 

A feeling of "center" is needed for good walking and balance. Steve now sees another OT  that deals exclusively with this vision issue. We have also noticed that when driving a golf cart at the outing, Steve's vision seems to be less of a problem. We have borrowed a golf cart and Steve and Rob go "driving" as much as possible in the field behind our house.

We all know Steve can text very well but that requires scanning only the width of his phone (about 1.5 inches). We now have him scanning to 3 inches width and are working to increase that length, by copying articles that are of interest to him and putting them into a MSWORD document and then moving the text into a desired width.

When Steve writes now, he usually starts at the left side of the paper like we all do. Not so long ago, he would start just to the right of the middle of the page. We are cautiously optimistic that we can fix this issue as it seems another "part" of normal is coming back!

Thank you for reading this blog; please keep those positive thoughts and prayers coming in Steve's direction. We ALL have seen the results!

Take care of yourselves!

Rob and Linda