Rowan has been in the Neuro ward for just over 2 weeks now. He’s awake, breathing on his own, and swallowing on his own. They’re getting him sitting up every day. From the neck down, physically he’s all right … it’s just a matter of making the connection between the brain and the limbs.

They’ve fitted him with an automatic speaking valve, and he does say a few words … mostly “Yeah”. However, he doesn’t know his name, my name, where he lives, what date it is or anything like that. I’m not positive he knows who I am, but when I visit, he usually wants to hold my hand, so he seems to like me. However, he is starting to regain some long-term memory.

He still has his trach in, but they are hoping to remove it as soon as his chest infection clears. It’s improving, but it is taking its time.

I mentioned that Rowan is regaining some long-term memory. It's not happening how I expected. I sort of expected whole stories to come back ... like all of a sudden he'd be able to tell a short story of his childhood, or something we had done together, or a day on the job when he was a journalist. But it's not like that.

It's sort of like there's a 5-million piece puzzle in front of him, and each day over the past 3 or 4 days he has picked up a piece or two ... or maybe a few ... of the puzzle. The pieces are quite different, and don't necessarily connect to anything yet, and he might keep that piece, or put it down and pick up another one.

More specifically, the pieces seem to be in two categories: physical and word phrases.

In the physical category, he's doing things like trying to get up in the morning. Or typical hand motions like nibbling a corner of his finger, or putting his hand in a "thinking" position on his face. Little things that I recognise as typically "Rowan".

He's starting to do the physical things a little bit more consistently.

In the word phrase category, it is just that ... random phrases are coming back to him. Different ones each day. Like: "it depends on" or "in the sense of" or "in the context of". He'll start a sentence quite confidently with a random phrase ... and then kind of dwindle out like he doesn't know where to go from there. But that's OK, it's a start.

And once in a while, he'll say a short sentence or phrase that really fits the context ... like he's reached down and grabbed the right piece of the puzzle!

So far, he's not particularly consistent with this category and he seems to pick up pieces, use them for a little while, and then put them down again. Hopefully, as time goes on, he'll pick up more pieces and start putting them together. But this is a start.

And they tell me that when he finally gets rid of the chest infection and gets the trach removed that he might start talking more. Here's hoping that happens this week, at last!