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!

Jenna is doing well.  Still about the same recovery-wise, but I am just so grateful to have her at all.  I’m patiently waiting for things to improve.  Her memory remains the biggest issue, with her physical stuff a close second (zombie stagger, left arm).

Anyway we all hope everyone else is having as much fun as little old us.

-Rob and Family

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abnormal_posturing

This morning I think we made a little progress.  After discussing (sometimes a bit harshly I admit) it at length with her this morning, she called me back a few hours later and read me a whole list of all the little things she had done since our last phone call.  It brought a huge smile to my face because she is actually doing the work that is going to allow her to come home full time, for good.

What I tell her is that her full-time job is to WORK on getting better, not just sitting around waiting for it to happen.  My “spritual journey” has gone full circle through all of this, but one thing has stayed consistent with biblical teachings, and that is that the Bible never says that God helps those who help themselves.  That is a myth and a lie.  The Bible actually says that God helps the helpless.  Jenna is not helpless, so she is on her own.  She can do the work that it is going to take to get her out of the CCS facility and back home with her son where she belongs.

I tell her that I will never give up on her as long as she never gives up on herself.  The moment she does that, I’ll do the exact same thing and just leave her there.  Its harsh but effective.  Today’s little litany of her activity since this morning is evidence of that much.

I love Jenna and will do anything and everything its going to take to get her back home with her son, including kick her metaphorical ass when it is needed.  The beautiful part is Jenna is at the point now where she can rise to the occasion and kick back.

I love this girl!

The house itself is this pretty big old farmhouse, and Jenna got to visit out here last weekend.  It was absolutely AWESOME to have her here. It was a wonderful, peaceful visit over the weekend.  It was a bit of a drag having to go get her on Friday, then take her right back on Sunday, but hopefully we can get longer home visits in the future.

Jenna did very, very well.  The only issue she had was trying (and failing) to remember the layout of the house.  Jaime (new housemate) had a ton of people over to help work on one of the project cars (1989 Helios Blue VW Jetta 16v identical to the one I had in Alabama, and was blasting the music out in the garage.  Jenna and I were sitting outside the garage listening to the music and just hanging out.  There were also a bunch of kids there, and a lot of other activity, all of which Jenna tolerated very very well.

We are going back to visit on Friday the 11th, and hopefully Carbondale isn’t hit in a 8th-anniversary attack.. Something tells me we’ll be safe in the middle of bumblef*ck southern Illy…

She still has some issues to work on, but the major reason why she was/is in the CCS facility was the fact that her bipolar condition blazed out of control after the brain injury.  I lived with this condition for three years, dealing with constantly recycling rages of anger and screaming, until it got to the point where I literally could not take it anymore.  I had been driven into the brinks of insanity myself, from which I thankfully recovered.  It took a good year+ to come back from the brink of hell but here I am.

Anyway the birthday visit was fantastic.  Just about everything is going as best as can be imagined, with minor hiccups along the way.  I am starting a business in addition to working in a not-for-profit law firm that helps people of modest means.  Right now I am just a mostly-unpaid intern but things should change by the end of this month, and I’ve branched out with a side business repairing broken iPods and laptop computers.

Cooper and I are going to see Jenna again next weekend and will be sure to love her as much as possible.  I tell Cooper that our #1 job is to love his mommy.  He is such a sweet little child.  Just an amazing kid.

More later!

Anyway, Cooper and I went to see Jenna for the extended weekend, and had a lot of fun.  It is so nice to have the little family together.  Profoundly nice.  Cooper got to play in the hotel pool on Saturday, we went to a soggy castle park on sunday, and went to the movies before we had to leave on monday.

Jenna’s memory seems to be improving in small subtle ways, and her mood is awesome now.  A whole world’s difference between now and the living hell that was three to four years ago.

I continue to work on the Cooper-Mommy relationship as much as possible, keeping him as close to her as I possibly can, given the circumstances.  Its a fine line between explaining to him the situation and making him understand what is going on, and bumming him out with the profound loss we are dealing with which even I do not understand fully yet.  (Mostly I just tell him that we need to love Mommy as much as we can.) For her part, Jenna still asks me what is different about her and says she likes her new situation just fine.  It kind of makes it better but kind of makes it suck worse.

I think she is almost ready to come home, but I am still working on getting my own life together careerwise.  I am working one job now and will start another one next month, but unfortunately both are under-paid to say the least.  Ive found that the huge gap in my resume since the accident to now has been a major impediment and the only way to overcome it is with personal connections.  Personal connections I had to literally form out of thin air.  But its happening, and hopefully in the next few years some prosperity will take place and the grinding poverty of the last many years will be a faint memory.