Get lost Pavlov

Hopefully those of you that know me would agree that normally I'm an optimist.  I look at a situation and think 'oh yes, all will be fine in the end, it usually is'.

I have clearly spent too much time recently with the harbingers of doom, otherwise known as Jake's medical team and have become conditioned to any chink of light being swallowed back up into the darkness of statements like 'we must remember that he has a devastating head injury', 'we just don't know how bad it will be' and, my personal favourite; 'are you sure you saw him do that, he doesn't do it when we're around'.  I have found myself questioning everything, only hearing the bad news and expecting the worst like I've been reprogrammed, it's all very Pavlovian.

And then today a little bit of the optimism and positivity broke through and yelled at me to pin my ears back and start listening for the good again.

I get a sense there’s been a subtle shift and suddenly there are statements like 'we're surprised at how well he's doing', 'that's a response not a reflex, a really good sign', 'Jake will definitely be a speaker' and 'that's really normal, don't worry about it'.  This is still peppered with the ever repeated 'it's still early days' and 'there's a long journey ahead', but this shift in tone is wonderful, so I'm re-programming myself back to being an optimist; Pavlov can bugger off.

The changes from last week are also subtle, but he has now conclusively proven that control of his right hand is improving by using it to pull his feeding tube out... twice.  He is also making more noises than before which apparently is also a good sign.

He still spends at least 70% of the day asleep, which is 'really normal' and is not yet physically capable of sitting up, talking past a couple of mouthed words or following simple requests and sometimes he is completely unresponsive, but there seems to be genuine optimism for his recovery which was never more evident than this morning when one of the physio team responded to my announcement that 'I've decided to work on the basis that he's going to make a good recovery' with 'you go for it'. 

Well hello there Mr Optimism, welcome back my old friend!