BEAUTIFUL Day!

I am in such a good mood this morning I can barely stand myself. My jaw is sore all the way up the side of my face, my gums on the top left side are sore, I can't really bite into anything--and this is a gigantic improvement! I was able to get the root canal yesterday afternoon (all afternoon long--it took four hours!) and I slept last night for eight hours. It's like a whole new world this morning.

Anyway, on to more important matters...

As I mentioned yesterday, J.J.'s speech had been choppier over the last couple of days, which I think was due to lack of sleep. This morning he seemed significantly better. He's still frustrated about his reading; last night he read a couple of pages aloud to me, and he sounds like a first grader just learning to read. We had been told to expect this, though, and he is getting better (he says that once he's read a word once he tends to be able to read it much better in subsequent tries). He is trying to read primarily work related stuff and higher level vocabulary to gain back as much function as possible as quickly as possible. He'll get there.

I've been noticing over the last week or so that J.J. is truly the happiest I think I've ever seen him. I think this "near death experience" (in quotes because he wasn't ever in true danger) has made us both realize how good we have it. It's been a wake up call in health related terms, as you can tell by J.J.'s tremendous weight loss, but also it has forced us both to live in the moment, since it really hit home that none of us has any idea how many more moments we have. Anyway, even though J.J. is frustrated by the stroke's aftermath, he radiates this calm satisfaction almost all the time. Last night while we were drifting off to sleep (and please remember, this conversation was influenced by my being on Vicodin!) we talked about the concept that maybe we need to consider that God didn't just help us get through this experience, but that just maybe, we can consider that He gave us the stroke as a gift to help us remember what's important. I think this sort of mentality is a big part of what makes J.J. a stroke survivor and not a stroke victim, if you know what I mean.

Alright, I must start working, especially since I've not been able to do as much lately as I'd have liked due to the tooth. I'll try to do a more thorough update this evening; J.J. has speech therapy today so I'll report on the results.