Second year Day 14 - Thursday December 27, 2012

Today I took Bridgett all to the Bigfork Clinic to see Michelle Helwig.  We have really enjoyed having her as Bridgett's primary care physician.  She is so personally interested in her patients and really seems to care!  We were supposed to follow-up with Michelle after we had Bridgett in the ER back in November, but with travelling etc. it just hasn't happened until now.  Also, Bridgett has been complaining about pain in her lungs, and since she is prone to pneumonia I thought we should just check it out.  Michelle said that Bridgett's lungs are clear; she's just got congestion. So, no more antibiotics--yeah!  We discussed the whole kidney stone thing and Michelle agreed that it seems that Bridgett did pass a stone at the ER.  So, one of Bridgett's gifts for Christmas--an anatomy coloring book.  Bridgett has always been interested in anatomy and she also took anatomy as part of her curriculum at Provo College, where she was taking their personal trainer program.  She and I started studying it on Tuesday; she did some coloring of the bones in the leg. Each day now we have reviewed the names of the femur, the tibia and the fibula.  By today she is remembering the names of the bones.  Further indications that she can re-learn and memorize things when she gets back to college at some point!  Exciting!  Tonight I took Stephany to meet with her Young Women's President, Sister Neilsen.  We discussed Bridgett's situation with her.  I was thinking back to the beginning, when Bridgett pretty much spoke her own language.  Everything they asked her to name in therapy, she used a word that wasn't from English for sure!  I started secretly writing down some of the words and she would use the same word for the same things each time, just like it really was a language.  She could even spell these words, which the speech therapist said she had never seen before--someone spelling the nonsense words.  I believe that it's because it was an actual language for her.  Anyway, at some point the therapist said we can't understand your language.  I began to tell her that she needed to learn to speak English so we would know what she was talking about.  Anyway, of course, she is doing great now and very rarely forgets the actual name of something.  The other day though, she looked in the mirror and said that her hair was all skwoofy.  I said what is that word and she spelled it for me.  Maybe it's a hang on word from the other language!  Hum.....