2nd Enbrel Injection Today

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New video of Mom identifying Dad by name today!!!!!

1. When I gave Mom her shower last night, she washed her own hair and rinsed it, and washed her upper body herself. She also dried herself. Her improvement in this area has sustained.

2. Mom had her second Enbrel injection today. We met with Dr. Tobinick for a while. If we were going to be in California longer, he would have waited until next week before giving the 2nd injection to see how fast she declined. This would have been to help gauge what the appropriate dosage would be. However, Mom and Dad are only staying for 4 injections, so he modified the dosage and gave her an injection today.

3. During the evaluation before the injection Mom did very well. Her ABC’s, counting and days of the week were much better than before the 1st injection. She also identified both Pal and I by name when asked who we were. She also was able to do the folded paper test, where they give her a blank sheet and ask her to fold it in half and place it on the floor. She was not able to do this test during the first appointment. During the injection she did not flinch, and laid calmly in the face down / head down position afterwards. This injection was much easier on Mom than the first one. After the injection we didn’t see much immediate improvement. Mom does get tired of the questions and drills, and we did everything in a much tighter time frame today. She was showing signs of being tired before the appointment, and was very tired afterwards, so I was not concerned that we didn’t get that WOW improvement in the doctor’s office the second time around. However we did start seeing improvement after we left.

4. I have noticed today Mom is picking up many more random words that she hears or reads and incorporating them in her chatter. She is talking about Joan and Pat (her sisters) much more. She used to do this a lot last year. She is also reading words off of road signs or hearing words in songs and picking them up. We passed Ronald Reagan Fwy, and she chatter about Ronald Reagan for a while. Then it was Budweiser, Carl’s Jr., Normal, etc. . . We also heard a song walking out of Chili’s that said something about “love” and she said “I love you” for quite a long time. We mentioned it was Danielle’s birthday today, and she chattered about Danielle’s birthday for a very long time. We saw this to a lesser degree last week, but she’s holding onto the words longer today.

5. Missy is in a slide show/audio presentation on the INR website. Follow this link, then click on her image at the bottom of the page. Dr. Tobinick showed this to us during the appointment today. Link to the INR Slideshow

6. Tonight we did some work with Mom identifying us when we asked. She consistently identified Dad when I asked “who is that?”. I spread it out 5-10 minutes apart between attempts, and she correctly identified him as Pal or Daddy 5 out of 5 times. Impressive to me because I think I have seven instances of her correctly identifying any of us over the entire first week (including her identifying Dad and I immediately before the 2nd injection). In addition to the five times with Dad this evening, she correctly identified me several times on the drive back home and both of us at Chili’s. Over the past year she has rarely identified anyone by name, so this is a dramatic improvement.