May 10, 2004

Russ is taking his new therapy sessions seriously. We went away for the weekend to visit Jane and Steve Hartin in Lancaster. Russ brought along his cognitive therapy homework. We didn’t ask him to, he just brought them along. I looked over his shoulder a couple of times. He was looking for patterns of numbers, letters, arrows, or shapes in a large grid of the similar items. It was a large grid and the pattern could be forward, backward, up down or diagonal. Some were pretty difficult. He didn’t give up. He stayed at it for hours and got it done.

On Friday night Russ was very happy about something. The night before Russ went to a party at RVCC for Chef Greg who is leaving the club. Russ had a beer at the party and said he didn’t cough or choke one time. Russ has had 2 of his new VitalStim treatments and he is very encouraged by his progress. Soda and beer have been the two drinks Russ has the most problems with since they are both thin liquids and are both carbonated which adds to the problems.

Thanks for following Russ’ recovery.

Bob