snowy with partly awesome

Sitting in my chair, watching a few blowing flurries in the otherwise bright sunlight - I’m in the lull between Speech Therapy and Occupational Therapy, hunting and pecking on my laptop. My spirits are bright as well, just now. Speech is aggressively verifying my ability to swallow, and after several days of eating containers of blue applesauce (and later finding no blue dye in my lungs) my speech therapist had me DRINK something today. You will have to take my word for just what a set of miraculous novelties this involved: the sensation of cool fluid in my throat after four weeks of warm nothing; the taste of something other than me, to wit, a full can of ice-cold ginger ale dyed blue; the activation of muscle groups I was scared had left my body entirely. The trial went very smoothly, as my therapist anticipated… and no dye in my lungs so far. Score! One more step on the road to getting rid of the tracheotomy. (It tasted so good that I cannot wait for the next can, tomorrow.)

Just finished OT, now. During exercises, the therapist mentioned how nice music would be… so I turned to my laptop and played Fountains of Wayne’s “Traffic and Weather.” I’m very slow poking the keyboard, still, but between the Smartnav and a palm-sized mouseclick button, I’m getting back some ability to drive my laptop. Huge sensation of regaining something lost, as you might imagine.

I am still reading and realizing the outpouring of love from family and friends new, long, and thought lost. Far beyond humbled and grateful and amazed, you will find me buoyed by it, held high by it: sustained by it.

It is even better than ice-cold blue ginger ale.