Eric made me so proud today. He is so far away from having his old voice back, he may never sound the same as he used to, but today he pushed himself really hard in his speech therapy session so I almost cried. I was very proud of him. By puffing his cheeks, forcing the air out and pronouncing the word at the same time it actually came out ok. Just a week ago, Eric wasn’t able to fill his cheeks with enough air to make the cheeks puff; think about that for a moment. During physical therapy I had the laptop in my lap to get some stuff done, I didn’t pay that much attention to Eric until I looked up and there he was, walking towards me without a cane and without a walker. Eric was walking with minimal assistants from his therapist. Unbelievable. He concentrated so hard on taking one step at the time so he didn’t see the tears in my eye.

Eric is obviously progressing but is it enough for the insurance company to approve his stay for one more week? Eric’s setback was due to medical reasons, it wasn’t his fault so I’m now arguing for another week at RIO to gain what we missed, and I want the insurance company to pay for it. We are up for a big challenge this week, and possible another war with the insurance.