June is Aphasia Awareness Month so of all the blog post ideas swimming around in my head, I thought I’d address aphasia. And procrastinate on the report cards that I should be working on.

Recently, Dr. Mike Dow’s book was released on amazon. His brother, David, and mom, Carol are 1/2 of Aphasia Recovery Connection, which is the organization that organized the Boot Camp we went to in March. One of the really wonderful speech therapists who was at Boot Camp, Megan Sutton, also contributed to the book. There are definitely questions that don’t relate to Zack but many do and it’s interesting and quick reading for anyone.

The same weekend as the Reno Tahoe Odyssey relay and the Girls on the Run Sierras Spring 5k, our Boot Camp friends Art and Becky were at the Resort at Squaw Creek for the No Barriers Summit. We were able to visit with them, our friend Darsie (who lives in Truckee and Zack knows from the Not Alone Aphasia Group at UNR), and some new friends also from the NYC area.

It was really fun to meet Allyson, Ed and his mom Rosemary, and Ken. We were 10 people at a big round table in a busy restaurant with background music so conversation was tricky but it was a good reminder of what’s to come! ….

This coming weekend another Boot Camp friend, Chris, is coming to Tahoe! He’s in the middle of a 35 day, solo cross country road trip and we’re excited that we made it onto his itinerary. Zack and I will host an afternoon bbq on Saturday so we can see some ARC friends (including UNR students and their favorite professor, Tami) and a couple of Zack’s slps too! It will be a fun day.

Where is Zack right now? While I’m not writing report cards? After suffering through 5 weeks of shingles, he’s feeling better and got out of Dodge this morning. But not before celebrating his employee/our friend, Martin’s youngest daughter Jamie’s quinceanera last night. If possible, it was even more of all adjectives than her older sister Daisy’s. In this picture, Daisy is changing Jamie’s shoes while her handsome chambalanes look on.

So where is Zack? Many ski friends will have already guessed. He’s camping on Mt. Shasta. Where it is snowing (although it’s also snowing here in Incline) and windy. But he’s warm and safe in his tent. 🙂 Thank goodness for his inReach and cell phone so I don’t worry all night long.

Back to the shingles for just a second. I’m sure shingles for anyone are unpleasant but from my experience, when you have aphasia and shingles together things really go downhill. For the worst days, he became a bit nonverbal and was very uncomfortable. It took me a week to figure out that things were serious, email with Dr. Smith, get an appointment and go with him.  The pain meds were a once a day option and left him drowsy and still not pain-free. But the worst part was that Zack was restless and depressed. His phenomenal ski season came to a screeching halt and he instead found himself on the couch watching endless hours of our free HBO trial and dozing. Although Molly is tuckered out at the thought of big mountain skiing, she was thrilled that he was at home so much.