This little piggy went to rehab. This little piggy went home. <\/i><\/p>\n
This little piggy had salmon, this little piggy had none … <\/i><\/p>\n
And THIS little piggy went “wheeee wheeee wheee wheeee wheeeeee!” All the way home.<\/i><\/p>\n
Since the stroke<\/a>, Tom can’t flex the toes or upper part of his right foot. So I manipulate his foot for him just to give it a stretch, and while I wiggle his toes I recite the little piggy poem. I try to make up different words each time so that I make him laugh.<\/p>\n There are few greater pleasures in life than making Tom laugh. He doesn’t hold back. And he makes me laugh so often, I’m really proud of myself when I can return the favor.<\/p>\n His smile is just a tiny bit crooked, but he can laugh.<\/p>\n Being a caregiver, even in a hospital with great nurses like at University Hospitals, is something like being a parent. You get up in the middle of the night to smooth his blankets. You get tired standing while you feed him, and sometimes you make a mess when the rice falls off the fork. You don’t always know the right thing to do, especially when he is fussy. <\/p>\n You live for his smiles and laughter.<\/p>\n Open up the station doors, here comes the choo-choo train, open up the barn doors, here comes the turkey, open the garage door, here comes chocolate pudding…<\/i><\/p>\n I’m clumsy wielding a fork and I force Tom to take bites that are too big. He makes faces but he deals with it.<\/p>\n He chews and swallows. He eats. He laughs. <\/p>\n He can raise his right arm a little. He can grasp a sponge block with his right hand. He’s raising and holding his right leg up to a count of more than 5. <\/p>\n Today he can sit upright without falling over. He sat in a chair twice, for 30 minutes and 45 minutes. Friday he fell over onto the bed, and could only sit for 15 minutes in a chair, with a strain.<\/p>\n He’s better. And he didn’t lose any part of his cognition or memory.<\/p>\n He asks the doctors and nurses questions. He narrates his medical history with color and clarity. He offers insights about his habits. <\/p>\n He makes us all laugh.<\/p>\n Tonight we watched an animated Pixar movie, “Big Hero 6.” I fell asleep toward the end because I was so relaxed. We liked the movie. I loved the simple pleasure of watching a movie together.<\/p>\n He can see. He can hear. He can understand the dialogue. He can follow the plot. He gets the jokes.<\/p>\n He can laugh.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2000. The year we met. The first time he made me laugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This little piggy went to rehab. This little piggy went home. This little piggy had salmon, this little piggy had none … And THIS little piggy went “wheeee wheeee wheee wheeee wheeeeee!” All the way home. Since the stroke, Tom can’t flex the toes or upper part of his right foot. So I manipulate his … read more Simple pleasures<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[84,136,486,328,1363,484,1097,20],"class_list":["post-8613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvisation","tag-84","tag-health","tag-hospital","tag-laughter","tag-mindfulness","tag-stroke","tag-toes","tag-tom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8614,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8613\/revisions\/8614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}