Stormy Weather

There is some sort of tropical disturbance out in the Gulf of Mexico which has been sending us scattered thunderstorms for four days straight now. When it's not pouring rain, the sky is gray and dark and gloomy. A good match for my mood...

Yesterday at Rehab, I ran into the speech therapist, who gave me such a look, such a cold "how-do-you-do", that I didn't have the guts to ask about a waiver. The feeling I got from her is that she's fed up with us, done with us, so to speak. As Bob would say, "oh well"....

Also yesterday, in the morning, Bob woke up crying. I kept asking him "what's wrong?" but all I could get out of him was "I don't know" and, believe me, if he doesn't know, how can I help him? So there we were, him crying and now me crying. What a pathetic team we make....

I think, if only he could learn to communicate, to get his brain around the words so he could tell me what was going on in his mind, could express his feelings or let me know exactly what he needs, I think, everything would be so much easier...

Meanwhile, I've been searching for someplace to send him for more therapy and coming up pretty much empty-handed. There is a clinic in town called The Aphasia Center which specializes in speech therapy and they also work with swallowing problems. They seem to take on a lot of patients who have been discharged from "traditional" speech therapy.  From their website, I read the following:  "The speech therapist is the second force for therapy discharge. Your therapist may have more or less run out of ideas or ways to help you" and I'm thinking: right on, sister! This is exactly what has happened with Bob's therapist (the "first force", according to the website, is insurance companies). Anyway, this clinic specializes in intensive aphasia therapy, "personalized" therapy for each individual, 10-30 hours per week for 6-10 weeks, but the cost begins at $3733.00 and goes up from there. Oh, how I would love to enroll Bob is such a program! And it breaks my heart just knowing there is such a program out there, but not for Bob, because the insurance doesn't cover it and there is absolutely no way we can afford it....

Last night, I couldn't sleep. Bob is still keeping me up at nights with his bedwetting. So, after I got him cleaned up, I went out on the front porch. This was about midnight and the neighborhood was quiet (even the drug dealers down the street had retired for the night)... I sat in the dark, on the porch, watching a lightening storm in the distance. The lightening was far away, so far away I couldn't hear the thunder. From that distance, it seemed like bolts of lightening were repeatedly stabbing the ground, in the same spot, over and over again. It was a terrifying, but beautiful sight. Sort of like our life. Which at times seems both terrifying and, strangely, beautiful....