Get Well Clarkie!

This post was going to be about the great weekend Aaron had staying with Mum and Ray in Whangarei and I will get to that BUT in the meantime….huge news…..almost 3 months since Aaron’s crash those vocal chords have suddenly KICKED INTO LIFE!

Honestly, it feels like every week we have something new and amazing but this one is the one that I thought may have been a long and hard road.  But once again Clarkie has kicked butt.  When are you going to stop brother?  HAH – I would say never!

On Sunday at Mum & Ray’s Aaron woke up to find that his voice was back.  By that we mean a great big beautiful sounding manly voice.  Rather than the hoarse ‘whisper’ that Aaron’s been using and which is very tiring.  By the afternoon the voice had become weaker but still relatively clear.

Monday morning however it seemed to be back and in great shape and when I called in yesterday around 6pm his voice was really strong and sounding so fantastic.  When he laughed really loud at something his nurse Wendy had said it was the best sound.

We were due to go to a specialist appointment today with the Ear Nose & Throat expert.  They have brand new equipment there and were all set to “go in” and try a few techniques on Aaron’s chords.  Yesterday morning though, Aaron’s Speech & Language therapist, Victoria, called the specialist and explained the changes.  Victoria then got Aaron to talk to the specialist on the phone and she said there was no point coming in any more! 

It’s quite incredible and a bit of a relief that the chords came right before the appointment as if they had tried (for example) injecting collagen into his chords to try to increase the chances of them vibrating together we would not have known so quickly that they had actually come right on their own.

So why did this suddenly happen overnight?  The specialist believes that it’s a good indication that the nerve attached to the chords was stretched in the accident and that it was just a matter of time before it corrected itself.  God bless that wee nerve I say.

I was telling a friend of ours, Pip Sail, about it last night.  She’s is a top NZ physio and has worked on rehab patients.  She thought another reason may be that now that Aaron is eating the muscles are being worked more and that may have helped as well.

It’s a massive step forward for our Clarkie boy as this was the 3rd major goal that he wanted to achieve, out of Eat, Walk & Talk.  ‘Talk’ was always going to be the hard ask as it appeared to be the part that wasn’t making any progress, which Aaron found very frustrating. 

There is still a long way to go with Aaron’s speech but he’s really positive about it.  One of the things that is instantly apparent is that now that his voice strength is back it’s more noticeable that Aaron’s tongue isn’t moving the way it should be.  This makes it difficult to understand words with e.g ‘p’, ‘d’, ‘t’ in them.  This can be addressed with speech therapy and now that we have his vocal chords working Victoria can be sure of using techniques that won’t damage his chords.

Wendy, Aaron’s head nurse, also commented that overall his coordination is improving markedly and the tongue is part of that.

So there you have it!

As mentioned Aaron had a wonderful weekend in the beautiful North.  Mum & Ray live in a gorgeous bay called McLeod Bay and since Aaron was there last they have totally transformed the tiny house that was there into a stunning 3 level home.  To say Aaron was blown away is an understatement!  The photos just don’t do justice to the view.

Saturday consisted of a day at Mum & Ray’s cafe with visits from Arwen Page and Nick Williams!!  A great day then topped off with scallops and prawns on the barbeque for dinner.  You should have seen the smile on his face when he told me that one

Here are a few photos for you.

So all raise your glass to our boy Clarkie – you’ll hear him say cheers very loudly all the way from Pt Chev.

Meg xx