Surviving Traumatic Brain Injury

              SPEAK OUT! Itty-Bitty GIANT Steps

SPEAK OUT! Itty-Bitty Giant Steps will provide a venue for brain-injury survivors and caregivers to shout out their accomplishments of the week.

If you have an Itty-Bitty Giant Step and you would like to share it, just send an email to me at donnaodonnellfigurski@gmail.com. If you are on Facebook, you can simply send a Private Message to me. It need only be a sentence or two. I’ll gather the accomplishments and post them with your name on my blog approximately once a week. (If you do not want your last name to be posted, please tell me in your email or Private Message.)

I hope we have millions of Itty-Bitty Giant Steps.

Here are this week’s Itty-Bitty Giant Steps.

Cheri Richardson Hicks…My Itty-Bitty Giant Step is that I ventured away from outpatient therapy into a new program called Quest. It is a program that gets people back to work and back into the community. I really feel like this is what I need to get me to where I need to be, so it couldn’t have

Melinda’s 100 piece puzzle

Melinda Murphy…Here is one for your Itty-Bitty Giant Steps. I used to be able to do 5000-piece puzzles in 2 or 3 days. I have not done any at all since the accident, until now. Four days, 2 tables, and only 100 pieces – but I did one, and I am thrilled (even if a piece was missing)!

Carmen Gaarder Kumm…Here is my Itty-Bitty Giant Step. I worked 4 1/5 hours today. I took three kids to town (20 minutes away), completed what needed to be done (I only forgot one thing, but my daughter will do that for me in the morning, as she is going anyway), picked up supper (knowing that I wouldn’t have much time once we got home), finished a Facebook page for our church, helped a bit with Vacation Bible School, picked green beans in the garden, and packed for the weekend away. I’m in bed before 10:00, and I don’t feel I overdid it…feeling good actually.

Donna O’Donnell Figurski (caregiver)…This week we have friends from Germany visiting us. They wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, which is about 4 hours from my home – too far for a day trip. Though David would have liked to go, he knew it would be too difficult for him, and he had seen it a few times before. He chose to remain home.

Caboose – haunted by ghost

That’s where my dilemma came in. David is 9+ years out from his TBI and still deals with many issues, including balance deficits, and I have never left him alone at night. Though he is completely

able to stay at home during the day, I always worry about the night. David convinced me he would be just fine, and after much discussion and a ton of angst, I agreed to go with our friends to the canyon. I insisted that David and I be in constant cell-phone contact.

So off we went to Williams, Arizona, where I slept in a little red caboose, which is supposedly haunted. The ghost may or may not have made an appearance. The jury is still out on that one.

But the jury is in on my trip to the Grand Canyon and on David’s staying overnight by himself. He did it! I did it!

WE did it!

Congratulations to all contributors!

(Clip Art compliments of Bing.)