Hi, this is Linda, one of the Speech-Language Pathologist that has worked with Bob. He is making such great progress and during the past week has made great strides in his cognitive functioning! He is so motivated and will forego pain medications so he can participate in therapy. I've had to talk him into at least taking ibuprofen.

Today, we were working on his finding as many words as he can in one word and he did a fantastic job! This type of activity works on several areas, his ability to reason and problem solve, thought organization, sequencing and attention! It also works on his immediate and short term memory if he remembers if he's said a word before. His memory still needs some work, however I was really impressed with his ability to mentally change letters around to form the words, his thought organization of using similar endings, and just changing the intial phoneme or letter to make a new word. Bob would not have done so well on such a task last week.

I am not his primary speech therapist, but do cover for him and the changes since the first time I saw him in ICU have just been wonderful.

He is a wonderful man to work with and I have to extend a great thanks to his family, especially his children who are so supportive and caring for their father. That does a world of good for patients with acquired brain injuries to have a good support base!

Bob is also now eating a soft diet, which is an improvement over pureed any day! He sometimes likes to eat a bit too fast, like most men, so has to be reminded of his swallowing strategies once in a while.

His speech is greatly cleared and he is intelligible and doesn't sound like he's on medications or drunk unless he's very, very tired now, which is another improvement.

At any rate, I need to get going! Just wanted to let everyone know, with Bob's permission, how well he is doing.

Linda