January 27th, 2011 by Conor

I can’t even remember the last time I laughed as much as I did tonight. My eyes were filled from tears of laughter at several different times. Most of the jokes had to do with the logic test that Danny did 24 hours after his third surgery.

The therapist came into the room with her mask on as if Danny was a case from the movie Outbreak. Other than a couple of times that the dressings for Danny’s bandages had to be changed we hadn’t really seen this masked style treatment at all. I’m not sure what the reasoning was I just thought that it was kind of awkward. The awkwardness didn’t stop there… There Danny was seated upright with a huge white bandage wrapped around his head slowly rocking back and fourth in his chair with who knows what drugs running through his body. He somehow conveyed a look of equal parts wisdom and retardation. I have never seen it pulled off before.

Danny was then walked through a test of logic. He had to put the hands on a clock and draw in said time. He was also asked to complete a maze and some shape identification as well. I’m not sure if they had been doing these tests before Danny’s third surgery, but he sure would have smoked the test if he had done it beforehand. Just a day out of the surgery and on all kinds of pain meds Danny wasn’t looking quite as smooth. The situation was made worse by the room full of people, which he happily allowed to stay.

The test went, well, it went. Two highlights for me were the clock and the maze. Danny looked very confused with the clock scenario until he realized there was a clock in the room to look at. He made solid eye contact with the clock before he realized that he might jeopardize his cheating potential and quickly looked down again. A couple of seconds later he found a gap in the therapists attention and managed to peak up as if he was sneaking in the ultimate cheat move. “Danny it’s OK to look at the clock” the therapist chimed in after catching him in the act. Danny managed to look at the clock several times as he totally screwed up the replication on the paper in front of him. The hands of 1-6 appeared in the 1-3 area just to give you an idea. Another highlight was the maze. Danny didn’t do so hot on the maze. In fact, it took him about 10 minutes to do a maze that I’m pretty sure would take him 15 seconds to do tonight.

So here we are 2 days later and we were full of laughs imaging Danny on the hot seat taking this test- highlighted by his smooth criminal approach to cheating on the clock. It was great because Danny was already able to laugh at himself so much. I was so excited to see that he was laughing, and laughing a lot! It was a nice feeling, and a welcomed one at this point. It had been too long.

As far as I am concerned we already have a full recovery. We have Danny back. His haircut is a little funny. His right side is pretty swollen and there is hardware galore, but he is laughing and smiling more and more each day. Anything more than where we are at will be a bonus for all of us. I hope he can get back to whatever level of activity and performance he wants to get to. I’m just excited at the moment that he is mentally able to have hopes. What a relief. This have gone from bad to good in such a short amount of time. It really is hard to believe.