Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

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“Macrophages.” His expression was smug. “I’ll never forget the macrophages.” We had just had a discussion about memory and how things learned since the attack fail to stick unless he uses them.

“But you remember macrophages.”

“Of course! That was important!” The macrophages are his talisman. He brings them up every time. My son has acquired an uncommonly good knowledge of physiology through his determination to recover. He also has the impression I am a walking Wiki-thesaurus. I suppose from his perspective I am a bit of a dinosaur … and I hope to God he doesn’t read this or I’ll have another new nick-name…

Every so often though, I surprise him. The macrophages were one such moment when, to his delight, I didn’t know the answer. For the past three years they have come up fairly frequently, as they did the other day in one of the…