4/29 - Sam's Journey - Day 139

It's been a decent week at Casa Loeffler, despite the feeding tube drama of last week and this week. Sam passed his swallow test, clearing the path for eventual feeding tube removal. On Monday morning, he had an appointment with the gastroenterologists, and they were impressed with how much progress he is making. Apparently, the last time we were in, he still had the trach and that seems like forever ago to us. It's sometimes easy to get so wrapped up in waiting to see him make progress that we forget how very far he has come. A few days ago, I was silently lamenting the fact that we haven't heard him 'sing' yet, and then I realized that he's only been speaking for about a month. Every day his speech gets clearer, he forms longer sentences, and does not need to breathe in between words as much. Except for when he has just woken up. Then it sounds like he's had too much to drink, which is kind of comical. I'm not sure he feels that way, though. The other night, he apologized for being annoying. When we asked him how he thought he was annoying, he said, "I talk too much." If you consider that he was silent for more than 3 months, the concept of him talking too much is laughable. We told him to talk as much as he wanted. (And to not be offended if we don't catch everything he says.) When he was little, he was the slowest to talk and was always a man of few words. We always attributed that to the fact that he could hardly get a word in edgewise with the other "talkers" in the house. Now is his time to make up for that, and we're encouraging him to do that.

Other than continuing his progress at rehab, he had an outing to his sister's softball game last Friday. With his left hand still not cooperating, he has developed some workarounds for clapping. He either claps against his cheek (not my favorite) or claps with someone else's hand. A while ago before he was talking, he had come up with symbols for different people. Sarah's, for whatever reason, was holding up 3 fingers. Sam will say, "Hey, Sarah," then flash her the symbol, and she'll return the gesture. He was holding it up while she was on the field and on deck to hit, which of course she missed. And while it's kind of Hunger Games-esque, it's rather endearing that they have their own special greeting. 

Monday night we headed to Clark together for the first time since the accident. We told Sam that we were going to cheer for Sarah winning an award, which we were. What he didn't know was that he would be receiving the principal's award. What Sarah didn't know was that she would be receiving it, too. It was a fantastic night. They were both very surprised, and we were all very touched with everything that was said about and done for us. Everyone at the school has been beyond supportive, and the evening just felt like a big celebration/homecoming. 

I wish I could say that that's where the evening ended, but as we were getting Sam to bed that night, his feeding tube completely came out. So, off to the ER we went and were back home again with a new tube by 2am. All is well now, and when we reminisce about 4/25/16, we'll just remember the first part of the evening.

As Sam moves forward, our mantra continues to be "slow and steady wins the race". We are in the middle of the marathon now, and we are just going to let him run it. Knowing him, he'll run right past the finish line and go another 12 or 13 miles before he takes a break. 

This post's pictures are courtesy of all of the #TeamSam T-shirt photos I've been getting. Enjoy your weekend!