Coming Home Tomorrow

Today was such a busy day in preparation for Jerry's home coming tomorrow, I ain't gonna lie this woman is tired. I slept at the hospital last night and managed to get about six hours of sleep. The morning started early and the day was full. We had Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Exercise Group, met with the wheel chair dealer and spent 1 hour 45 minutes fitting Jerry for his temporary chair that will be delivered at home. We also spent another hour with him measuring and ordering his permanent manual chair which is going to be "Toxic Green", that's the color he chose, it's a pretty sweet color. We had three meetings today, one with the Social Worker, one with the Recreational Therapist and one with the Case Manager. To top off our busy day we went on an outing for dinner, sort of a going away party. Jerry chose Chinese food so two therapists, Jerry, Robin (a patient) and I loaded in the van and off we went.

Jerry had a great day despite the busy schedule. Jerry got to get in the standing frame again today, we had to practically beg because they didn't have the extra staff for it today. The goal was to get Jerry to a full stand for 30 minutes before we left the hospital, if he could do that then they could justify asking the insurance to cover the cost of a standing frame for home. Jerry was not able to get to a full stand (90 degrees) but he did very well none the less, he was able to get to 60 degrees before he nearly passed out. It will just take more time and that's OK, we can work on it in outpatient therapy and as soon as his body will tolerate it we can request a standing frame for our home.

Jerry felt good today, the only nausea was when he was in the standing frame. Jerry enjoyed his last day but he is really going to miss his nurses. There are quite a few nurses that Jerry took a liking to and he wanted to be sure he had the opportunity to say "See you later" to each of them, he didn't want to say good bye. We will have to visit.

Dennis spent the day at home building a temporary ramp to get the wheel chair into the house. After the wheelchair man left me at the hospital he drove to our home to meet Dennis. Dennis has done some research and found a chair that he feels is the best chair for Jerry however the insurance probably won't cover it because it's basically a beefed up model of what they think he would need. They won't pay for the extra beefiness unless it's justifiable. Dennis pretty much tortured the wheelchair man today. The purpose of the visit was to test out a few of the power chairs in Jerry's home environment including his neighborhood. For those of you who have never been to our home, we are pretty much surrounded by hills. Dennis and wheelchair man whose name is Carl, went cruising around camp in power chairs. We have one hill so steep we call it cardiac hill because when you walk up it's a good possibility you could go into cardiac arrest. Dennis was jamming down the hill and didn't realize that if you let off the gas so to speak it's just like putting on the brake, needless to say it was a darn good thing he was wearing a seat belt or he would have been thrown out, as it was he nearly flipped it. Dennis took Carl 4 wheeling in the grass and got stuck, poor Carl. However all of this made a very good argument as to the necessity for a more beefy chair, we will just have to wait and see what the insurance will do.

Tomorrow will be overwhelming, sad and joyous all at the same time. Thank you everyone for the love and support, please pray that we will have a safe journey home. Pray that we are all ready to handle this next challenging step, that we will be well equipped to handle any circumstance. Pray for strength but above all please continue to pray for Jerry's complete recovery, that every damaged nerve would be perfectly mended.

Good night
Katie