Last day in Dublin. Early start tomorrow morning. I missed all the excitement: the chocolate pudding, the ice-cream, the sitting on the side of the bed. I am telling myself that I can live with that, because this is still just the beginning. On a good day, when Pádraig has the speech valve on, he checks out his vocal chords – probably wondering about where they had been over the past year. It’s not speech, far from it still, but sounds he is experimenting with. He is also repeating sounds, or rather still trying to repeats sounds like an ‘ah’, not always very clear, but clearly as a reaction of a request. Think back a few months – all of the things, the ‘first’, that have been happening we were, in the best of cases, dreaming of. And now they are a reality.

I am sure that Pádraig will be developing all of his new found skills to a much higher level. What he needs is the right support in the right atmosphere, and lots of will-power.

Today, he had one of his self-determined resting days. He was a bit tired and slept a lot. And just as I am writing it: think about it, Pádraig slept! Well, he slept because he can also be wide awake. Also something we needed a lot of faith to believe in it ever happening again.

Wo ein Wille ist, da ist auch ein Weg!

Can’t wait to get back to see him.