So PROUD of Jenna….
My mom was here for the holidays and she remarked that Jenna seemed to be much better. Her observations included the fact that Jenna is using longer sentences and just seemed more “there”. She really is amazing. Everything I ask her to do as far as her recovery goes, she does. She used to be such an obstinate character, but now that she is on the good meds, she really is working hard at doing what she needs to do. I tell her that as long as she never gives up on herself, I wont. And she just continues to kick so much ass.
The last week she dropped her norelco-style rotary shaver (legs) and kept calling me telling me that she needed a new one (she forgets what she’s told me, in case that is not obvious). I went ahead and bought her one online, and I called her to tell her about it, and she announces to me that she has fixed her existing one!
This is a girl who was injured so profoundly in her brain that she almost DIED, from that brain injury. Not a heart attack, or gunshot wound, but an injury to her very identity and capacity to be who she is and was. She was just about as close to dying from her brain injury as is possible, without actually doing so. Technically there was one more step of “worse” she could have gone through, then it would have been certain death. And here she is reassembling the shattered remains of her broken electric shaver!
We are still working on her transition home. Jenna is working on the skills she will need once she is back at home with her son, where she absolutely belongs. I’ve been working on the relationship between mother and son kind of as a third party to it, with Jenna’s name on my lips all the time with Cooper. But there is no substitute for her actually being there and physically being his mother again.
This all happened when Cooper was only about a year old, so he never really got a firm picture of who his mother was before the accident. And I can talk about it until my face turns blue but there is never a substitute for the real thing. We do have a new, different Jenna. We will never have the other one back again, most likely. But we love the new Jenna and we are so EFFING proud of her, it gives me shivvers.
Kicking ass and taking names, baby!
Love you Jenna!