The cure for insomnia

Apparently the cure for insomnia is to stay up late watching a nail-biting overtime conference tournament win by your favorite team. :) This morning instead of going in Dad's room to find he's been up for an hour working on quad-strengthening exercises in bed, he was rolled up in his blanket like a bug in a rug snoring away. Seriously, he has been sleeping better the past few nights. I actually attribute it to the relief the neuropsych gave him the other day in telling Dad that everyone who suffers anoxia struggles to get their sleep patterns back to normal. It's good to know it's not just you and that you're "normal."

And another contributor to his relaxation is the fact that we were able to visit the state's Low Vision Center yesterday to test Dad's visual acuity and take advantage of some tools to help him while he waits for his vision to improve. In watching their assessment of Dad, I can see how much his vision has improved just in the last week or so, and I got a better idea of how he's perceiving what he sees and what I might be able to do to encourage and help him. (Dad says he's "seeing" better than ever, but he can't "focus" on what he sees. Warning: nonmedical speculative opinion... It seems to me that he can see better when he's not thinking about it, but things he has to think about are more challenging. For example, he can see and respond to me smiling at him when it just happens, but if I ask him to tell me what face I'm making at him, he can't. But I'm very encouraged every time I see evidence that he can see and process, however limitedly now, the same information everyone else is processing. In other words, it may take him a minute to focus on the image of a giant 7, but he can see it, understand the image and what it means, and articulate it. To me that bodes well for the future. End of nonmedical speculative opinion. ) Oh, and Dad got a really cool watch from the LVC that speaks the time to him when he presses a button. Fun.