November 4th, 2005

Today is Jess' grandpa's 88th birthday! Happy Birthday, Dad! Here is an update written by Amanda, our wonderful caregiver who takes Jess to school. As you will see we are truly blessed to have someone so loving, caring and concerned about his welfare....thanks Amanda!

Hello faithful readers! My name is Amanda and I have the best job in the world, taking care of Jesse Matey. I have been trying to organize my time a little better so that I could sit down and type up a brief page to be posted on the website. Finally, I am able to do this! I am a student myself, and my weeks are busy due to taking care of Jess, attending class, and studying.

To those of you who do not know me, I will brief you on a little history about myself. Before I moved to Hailey, I was currently living in Pocatello and worked for Portneuf Medical Center. I have ten years experience working with traumatic brain injuries, along with other areas of care that consist of: Medical/surgical, rehabilitation, same day surgery, pediatrics’, long term care, cardio vascular care, transitional care, and behavioral health. I do not have any children yet; my fiancée is hoping to change that as soon as we get married! I was attending ISU, but became very unhappy with their curriculum, therefore I transferred to CSI. I can honestly say that the instructors at CSI are much better!! So far my experience with this college has been wonderful. I am a certified “SNAP” which means, “student nurse apprentice”. The state of Idaho actually has a whole separate certification for SNAPS, unlike the certified nursing assistant, which is a separate classification. The job duties are similar, just a few changes with SNAPS that involve the fundamentals of nursing.

I recently became engaged in June of this year to a terrific man who is well known to the community, is hard working, compassionate, and a dedicated police officer. And yes, I am very proud of him! I feel truly blessed by God that he came into my life. Due to my recent engagement, and transferring colleges, I now reside in Hailey and love the area. Ok on to Jess.

Jess is an extraordinary young man who is getting stronger and progressing
more each day. I started working with him on July 5th of this year, and for me it was a matter of learning his body language. Pam was so good about just letting me come over to their home and observe Jess all day. I needed to get a better understanding of his needs, wants, and agitations when they arose, so that I could give adequate care pertaining to his type of injury. Jesse has the frontal lobe damage, anteriorly, right under the forehead. This is known as the Cerebral Cortex and it has a variety of functions, for example:

1) It determines what we are doing within our environment, and how we initiate our responses to activity.
2) It controls judgment, emotional response, and assigns meaning to words.
3) It involves word associations.
4) And it is the memory bank for habits and motor activities, examples: ambulation, weight bearing, and when to move extremities.

This is quite the range! And just think, this is only what the frontal lobe performs, the surrounding areas of the brain do much more!

I take Jess to school 4 days a week and we attend class and have a variety of subject matter as projects that we work on together. This involves: Painting, media, and psyche. Yes! Jess can paint, and he is pretty good at it too! Sometimes he draws, other times I will work on the communication process by using cards that have objects on them. I ask him simple “yes/no” questions and he responds with eye blinks. Two blinks for yes, one blink for no. However, He has a new speech therapist working with him and she changed the eye responses to hand responses. So now when I ask him a question, he answers by taking his left hand and opening it up for “yes” and makes a fist for “no”.

For some reason this therapist felt that the hand response would be better then responding with the eyes, because Jesse opens his hands up frequently, more so his left then his right. So far, he has been 80-90% accurate. However, he has days that he really doesn’t feel like giving me a response and this is normal. For those of you who do not know what a speech therapist job entails it is this; they primarily work on swallowing mechanisms, along with language skills and concepts. Due to the nature of Jesse’s injury, the messages from his brain to his extremities can become delayed, and his responses may be slow, other times they are quick. This too is normal.

The media class involves Jesse opening up his hands and placing them on the computer keyboard, which he does, when I ask him too. With my encouragement, he proceeds with light pressure on some of the keys and types a few letters. I position him so that he can see what he is typing on the computer monitor, and I enlarge the font. Other days during this class period I might pop in a DVD, and apply headphones to his ears and let him listen while he watches the screen. The DVD’s are mostly learning tools to help him progress further along. There have been days where Jess simply does not want to be real productive due to fatigue or depending on his mood. Again this is a normal and common response of TBI’s (traumatic brain injuries).

Psyche is the other class that Jess and I attend together. What a fascinating class! During this period Jess is more involved with the students by listening to discussions and basically just being a part of the group. There is something about this class that really gets Jess talking. And I don’t mean verbally, because he is not able to speak due to his injury. He can make soft monotone sounds, like he was humming, but it is his body language that gives him away. He can hear everything that goes on around him, and at times he responds to what is being stated. It is so interesting to watch him, because he can move all of his extremities including his neck and head, as well as producing the most comical facial expressions at the same time. Because Jesse’s judgment and motor activity has been impaired, he is unable to ambulate, but hopefully, with time and continued therapy this will change.
I tried really hard not to get too lengthy on my story of Jess, but I can’t help it, there is simply too much that I want to share with ya’ll!!

Jess Matey has managed to fill a void in my life that has really helped me. When I was just 18 years old, I lost my only brother to a horrible car accident. He was my best friend, and even though the years have passed since his death, not a day goes by that I don’t think about him. Jess reminds me of him in so many ways. This wonderful, handsome young man, whom I take under my wing 4 days a week, gives me inspiration, hope and courage. I am determined to do whatever I can with my skills and knowledge, to try and give back the life that Jess once knew before his accident. With teamwork from therapy, friends, and family, I am praying for his recovery. It has only been a year since Jess got hurt, and it could take another year or more before we might see any huge physical or mental changes. However, it may be less, he might surprise us all one day. From my experience working with TBI’s (Traumatic Brain Injuries) I have seen worse case scenarios that have been able to live a good quality of life, despite their limitations. For now, we can only “hope” for the better, and keep our spirits up.

Pam and Chris are absolutely amazing people for what they have done for their son. They have managed to maintain their composure, dignity and strength, in spite of what they have endured. They give so much unconditional love that it radiates from deep within them. If everyone could see the daily routine of these two incredible individuals, you would say to yourselves, “How do they do it?” During one of the many wonderful class discussions in psyche, Midge Patzer of Wood River High School recently addressed her students with this statement, “Love is a powerful emotion”. It is the love for their son that is the driving force behind their efforts, the one thing that keeps them continually moving forward. With love comes their extreme determination, willpower, faith and hope, that one day, Jess will walk and talk again. We are all right there with you Pam and Chris!! I would also like to add that Pam takes care of her folks as well, as you can see she is a busy little bee!

Well, this is everything in a nutshell. I will try and post Jesse’s progress as it happens, just to let everyone know how he is doing. I keep a daily journal for Jess and write down things that occur during the day and then some. I am hoping that one day he will read the entire journal to me out loud, possibly giving me some feedback on it. For now, Jess is making good progress, it is slow, but continuous, and at this point in time, this is all we can ask of him. He is able to perform certain functions now that he couldn’t do a year ago, for example; communicating, moving extremities, and swallowing thickened foods. In my opinion, this is tremendous progress for this young man!!

Life is so interesting at times, there seems to be never ending obstacles, and we struggle with many concepts from time to time. My perceptions of life in general, I view as though I were looking at myself in a mirror. I would like to share this philosophy of mine with you all.

An individual can perceive themselves like reflections in a mirror, their expectations through self-fulfilling prophecies build between the relationship of self-concept and behavior. The images that we see, can shape or mold us into characters of self-examination. We view our reflections of ourselves as we stare into a mirror. We see our past, our future, our sorrows, our pain; we see whom we have become regarding life’s game. We see how the decisions that we make can have a tremendous impact on our lives. The behavior we project towards others, the philosophy of “choice” is admirable only when stripped of its reality, only when worshiped as an ideal, believed in its abstract. Let faith, hope and harmony complete you as you move through these obstacles in life, it will keep the spirit strong!

*~I WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY THANKSGIVING, GOD BLESS~*~
~*~SINCERELY, AMANDA~*~