Monday - July 13

We have had quite a busy few days. Jessica had a tournament so Dennis and Jess stayed Saturday night in Stockton. Jerry and I went to a friends wedding, Salina. Salina looked so beautiful and is so cute. You know the tradition something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue? Salina's something blue was Jerry's (FollowingJerry) bracelet around her ankle. It was too cute when she took a picture with Jerry with her leg up on the arm of Jerry's chair to show the bracelet around her ankle. I gotta get a copy of that, who do I pay Salina? :-) During the reception Jerry said "Look" as he looked in the direction of his leg. Jerry had new movement, he was able to move his leg about a 1/2 inch. That does not sound like much but let me tell you any deliberate movement below the level of injury is mucho huge. It was deliberate movement that he was able to duplicate about four times. Jerry wanted to show Salina so I went and found her and he was able to show her as well, it was way cool. Jerry has not been able to make that movement since but continues to try. My understanding is the body gets fatigued so something you can do one day doesn't necessarily mean you can do it the next day.


We had to leave the reception a little early as I was having some lady friends over for game night. We got home about 5:30 and my guests were due to arrive at 7:30. I had just enough time to take care of Jerry's needs and get all my hors d'oeuvres ready before the gals showed up. Jerry went to the movie with a friend, it was nice for him to get out of the house and get a break from me. I had a blast with my friends which left about 12:30. By the time I cleaned up and got Jerry to bed it was 3 am so needless to say we slept in until about noon the next day. Sunday Jerry chilled and watched his shows or did computer work all day which is his favorite thing to do since his injury. I finally got an opportunity to pull all the weeds in my yard, I actually had weeds 4 feet tall. The flower beds are now practically empty. I didn't plant flowers this year for obvious reasons and all those weeds almost looked like plants. After pulling the weeds I see now I need some flowers. Ahh well whatcha gonna do? .....tomorrow's another day.

Today we had a massage therapist (Susan) come to the house for Jerry, I gotta say she was pretty amazing. Susan was here for well over two hours and even did a little work on me, it was wonderful. We are going to have Susan do massage therapy on Jerry probably every other week at this point. Part of the goal is to relive pain Jerry has in his neck and shoulders, hopefully to reduce the need for the pain meds. Any one local looking for a good therapist look no further, Susan Handloff Hammer of Harmony Massage does wonderful work. Thanks Susan!

After the appointment with Susan we had to load up and head to Santa Cruz. I had an appointment with the ear doc which was not pleasant. I've had a significant hearing loss in my left ear over the last 3 months. I took a steroid for two weeks which did absolutely nothing. Today the doc put a needle through my ear drum and injected a steroid near the inner ear. OK that was not fun, hopefully it will help to regain the hearing loss.

Our next appointment was with Jerry's doctor. I took all the charts that I've been charting for the last two weeks. Food chart, blood pressure chart, bowel and bladder chart, we're looking for a pattern and sadly the only pattern is something we already knew. Jerry's nausea level starts out between 5 and 7 every day, by mid day he's about a 3 or 4, by late afternoon he's at a 1. No correlation to bowel or bladder, blood pressure or food, the quest goes on. Jerry had major blood pressure issues today, we learned something new. Jerry wears compression socks to help keep his blood pressure up. On occasion he has gone without the socks and been fine. The socks is not something he will have to wear for life he can eventually get rid of them. Today was pretty hot so we thought Jerry would be more comfortable without the socks and as he has on occasion gone without them I didn't give it a second thought. So we found out today that when it's hot is when he needs them the most. Jerry could not sit upright without starting to pass out and stayed in a tilt position until we got home. The nurse took his blood pressure sitting up and it was 58 over 31 just as he was about to pass out. He went back to tilt position and his blood pressure went back up to 90 over 58, much better. Now we know.

Dennis was installing an attic fan in our house this evening. He was testing it out and went to adjust it and his hand slipped, he almost chopped off the tip of his finger. It was rather gruesome, the entire fingernail was ripped off as well as a hunk of flesh under the nail. I called our doctor and she confirmed what we thought, there's not much they can do other then to clean it up and give a tetanus shot. Dennis will go get a tetanus on Wednesday, the sweet thing is we have a nurse on staff here where we live at Redwood Christian Park. Dennis went down to the nurses station and she cleaned it up for him which saved a trip to the ER.

We still have a lot of Giants tickets left, if you plan on going tickets are still available locally at We All Ride in Soquel, Scotts Valley CycleSport and Felton Feed. You can also purchase them online here at the blog until Saturday at 12noon. Any tickets purchased online before this Tuesday will be mailed, those purchased between Wednesday and Saturday at 12noon will be held at will-call at the Stadium.

I guess that's enough for know, I think I'm all caught up on the latest.

See You There, Go Giants!!

Katie