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My cousin (the stabbed-in-the-head-with-scissors-one) called me today!
He's been home for about a week, still in intensive speech/occupational/physical therapy. It's a little heartbreaking to hear him try to speak, with the really (really) bad stuttering and cluttering and word choice issues, but you can definitely tell it's "him" in there. He knows what he wants to say, and got downright fluent for a few short periods when talking rapidly about concepts he felt strongly about, rather than chitchat. He's been told that they expect him to make a 100% recovery, in about a year's time. I told him I personally anticipate half that, if not less. First they were all, "he'll wake up in another two weeks" and he was all, "fuck you, I'm waking up today." Then they were all, "he'll be ready to go home in another 3 weeks," and he was all, "ha ha, suckers, looks like you meant 5 days." So now they say a year; idiots don't know a good bet when they see one...
He still can't draw for shit, but they did some kind of special hand-eye-coordination test that they give to brain injured patients, which somehow magically tells them what capacity is actually inside his brain vs. what he's currently able to make his hand do--and the lady said he outperformed a non-brain-injured person, even now. So they say he'll get full recovery for that as well.
The only thing they don't expect him to get back is the right half of his right eye's vision, which is gone because he apparently also had a mini-stroke at some point during all this, and that's a done deal. But they said his left eye will eventually compensate to the point that he won't notice it unless his left eye is completely closed.
But goddamn it was good to hear his voice again.
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