Mon 23rd:

Andrew has had a very good day.
Before I arrived, he had been visited by Dave Miller and Ali Heywood; on arrival he said he was confused which is a good sign, and we went through the usual stuff about why he was confused etc.

Neighbour Carol last week gave me some magazines, one of which is "Hello" magazine which has a huge feature on the Barack Obama inauguration. I decided to see how much Andrew could remember of this, so I showed him the cover , which shows Barack Obama dancing with his wife, and hiding the words ( because he cheats). He immediately identified him correctly, and said he was "president elect" of the united states. I took this as a very good sign, as this is a very recent occurrence. I then showed him pictures of the inauguration, which he did not remember, but he did identify the following people in the rest of the article:
- Joe Byden ( and I can't identify him!)
- Sarah Palin ( but he couldn't remember the pitbull/lipstick thing)
- Bill & Hilary Clinton
- Arnold Schwarzenegger ( might not have spelt that correctly!)
- Leonardo di Caprio
- Mariah Carey
- Aretha Franklin

In the rest of the magazine, he also identified the Beckhams ( I suppose that was inevitable)

During the afternoon he was visited by ex-Music Sales colleague Hilary with her little daugther Lydia and we went to the dayroom with the guitar and assorted percussion instruments which Hilary had brought in. We sang baa baa black sheep, old macdonald had a farm and twinkle twinkle little star. Lydia then decided she didn't want to do that any more, so we turned to some of the music sales song books that Hilary had also brought in and did all 9 verses of "Where do you go to my lovely" before we were displaced from the dayroom by a patient who had to be assessed.

The consultants came round quite late today; well into visiting time when the next visitor - cousin Marian - arrived. The main consultant looking after Andrew- Dr Sekaran - seeing that Andrew had the map open brought in by Sue last week, asked him where Cardiff and Birmingham were, which he identified correctly. He did a test for peripheral vision (OK) and said that Andrew is to have another MRI to see if there is any tear in the artery before he goes home. He hopes that he may be able to go home from around thursday this week! The TOE test will be later, after he is home. When he is home he is to rest and not do much.

Andrew played "pop trivia" with Marian and later with Chris , and did very well with both.

Tomorrow is the 1-hr home visit, which we are both looking forward to.

I have received more food parcels today, thank you.

Love Gill
xx