Day 78 (Nov 11)

Tobias found his words again this afternoon.  He is speaking again as well or better than a few days ago.  He was able to answer a series of questions for me.  "Do you want to eat, drink or watch TV?"  (TV)  "Do you want to watch a movie or a documentary?" (Documentary)  He provided us with some hard evidence that his personality hasn't changed when his mother hugged him.  (He never liked being hugged since he was a teenager).  He made some funny expression and so Katja asked "Do you want to be hugged?" (No).  "Hey, did you just say that you don't want your own mother to hug you?" (Yes)  I think it would have been diplomatically smarter to perhaps not answer so truthfully in this circumstance, but at least we know we're dealing with the same Tobias.  Tobias was visited by his aunt, two cousins and friends of mine so it was a busy day for him.  He correctly named both cousins and spoke longer .  His voice wasn't present, but he was able to whisper responses for much of the afternoon.

Tobias also made progress with eating.  He is now getting food for every meal and I spent 45 minutes coaxing him to eat the pureed mashed potatoes and gravy and the pureed chicken pot pie.  In the past he has been able to drink the thickened juices, but struggled to get his mouth open wide enough for the spoon to deliver much food.  He also found it difficult to swallow the thicker consistency when it didn't flow to the back of his mouth automatically.  Today he was able to open his jaws wider.  I had to help by putting the tip of the spoon into the small gap he was able to create between his teeth on his own and jimmying the teeth farther apart.  I could tell that he was assisting and he was able to hold his mouth wider once he had help overcoming the natural rigidity still in his jaw muscles.  He also swallowed when the thicker mush was in his mouth.  I don't think he was able to clear the food from his mouth so I helped by following each pair of spoonfuls with some cranberry juice chasers.  In all he swallowed a good six spoonfuls of food and finished the entire container of juice.  His progress is still slow, but it's nice to have a day like today when he shows his areas of progress on the same day with some degree of consistency.

Hope over fear.