The Post About Reading (Part 1)

We dug up Ivy's phone today, at her request. After she explained a few basic operating instructions to us, we fired it up. She was so happy to see it running again! She couldn't remember her voicemail password, but we noticed she had some text messages so we thought we'd read them to her. The first one I opened was from her friend Conor, on about July 27, a week into her coma. I think he sent it while he was visiting her at French Hospital. Anyway, it was hand written in a paint program in big colorful letters. I thought this might be easier for Ivy to see than the tiny font of a normal text message. We showed it to her and she looked at it for a second. I said, "Can you see it Ive?" She said, "Yeah." "Can you read it?" I said. She didn't respond at first, so I started to say "What's the first letter?" At the same time she said, "Get well soon." She had decoded it! It was the first time any of us had seen her read anything! Later we read a little from "Where the Sidewalk Ends".
From what I understand (as a completely ignorant layman), the area that processes the meaning of symbols (letters) involves a different part of the brain than the area associated with speech. It's been amazing to witness different parts of her brain start to come on-line again. Of course they aren't coming back at 100% yet, but there's no reason to think she can't make enormous improvements over time!