Dear family and friends,

Well it's been an eventful few weeks with Freja coming home, Tindra graduating from high school, my 50th birthday ( and completing the rest of the 36 clinical hours of training I needed before my license expired at the end of May)! There has definitely been an uptick in social events and Johan has done quite well despite having much lower social stamina than before. He continues to be quite upbeat, loving, gracious, thankful and kind. In large group gatherings he's usually pretty quiet and does better one-on-one where he can follow the conversation better.

It's been absolutely wonderful to have both girls home although Tindra has been off on lots of adventures with friends post-graduation but Freja has been home more often (when she's not at work) and is incredibly helpful. I'm loving it but trying not to get too used to all the help since they will both be leaving in the fall!! Tindra for college at Wesleyan in late August and Freja for a semester abroad in Lima Peru in mid-august.

Johan and i continue to walk few times a week and finally got a second hand treadmill so that Johan can get exercise while listening to the radio if I'm busy doing other things or if the weather's too hot or the air is too smokey. (It's also useful so that I can get exercise during his naps or other times where I don't want to leave him home alone.)

We also finally had a meeting with a neurologist and a cardiac genetic counselor both from UCSF. The neurologist was very impressed with how well Johan was doing and said that she had expected him to be fairing a lot worse given what she's seeing on the MRI. The genetic counselor seemed to come to the same conclusion as all of the cardiologists that it's a complete mystery why the aortic dissection happened (Johan's paternal grandfather having the same thing happen at 85 does not offer an explanation for why this happened to Johan at 50). We did the genetic testing  through a cheek tissue swab and we'll find out the results in a few weeks.

Johan continues to be moving in the right direction although progress seems to have slowed down which is to be expected given that on 6/18 it will be 6 months since the original aortic dissection and strokes. 

Jamaeca continues to be an incredible addition to our family and she does lots of vision therapy, cognition and memory therapy as well as a lot of practicing writing and reading with Johan 4-5 times per week. We continue to be incredibly grateful for her kindness, creativity and enthusiasm. 

We are also very grateful for our friend Jesse who has been doing Pilates and gentle strength and conditioning with Johan once a week and brings upbeat, lively,  joyful energy into our home.

We continue with the acupuncture, naturopathy and craniosacral treatments every week or multiple times a week and Johan always expresses his gratitude after the sessions and often reports that he feels wonderful and that he may even see a little better. In 10 days we have the 6-month follow-up with the neuro opthamologist where they will do the official visual field testing. Both Jamaeca and I have observed that Johan can see a little bit more in the lower quadrants than before so we are excited to see what the official testing shows. Unfortunately Johan's vision continues to be milky in the areas where he can see which has been very disappointing to all of us.

Our lives continue to revolve around Johan's healing as well as preparing to tent our house for termites on the 24th of June!

We are so grateful for all of the enthusiastic sign ups  but still may need a few extra hands  to help us pack up the weekend of June 21-23rd as well unpack the weekend of the 28-30th of June 🙏🏼 (more details in last month's CaringBridge installation)

Here is the link to sign up: http://evite.me/bnX5pVraWk

We continue to feel so blessed by our amazing community of family and friends that continue to rally around us and offer support even though it's already been 6 months. 

We again want to share our heartfelt gratitude for the healthy and delicious food that folks have brought by (and the restaurant gift certificates) as well as the grocery shopping that have both saved me countless hours so that I can continue to attend to Johan's healing and the unending tasks and details of our lives... 🙏🏼 

Here is the link to sign up 🙏🏼:
https://my.lotsahelpinghands.com/request/team-courtney-and-johan

AND all four of us continue to be SO emmensly grateful for the Go Fund me so that we don't have to worry too much yet about the loss of income and the mounting expenses of all the healing therapies Johan is taking part in.

We are grateful for continued prayers and visualizations of a strong, flexible, healthy aorta and carotid arteries as well as lots of brain healing and neural network connections especially in the occipital lobe.

XOXO

Courtney & Johan