Friday - Oct 9

I can't believe we're 9 months post injury, the time has gone so quickly. I really thought at 6 months things were going to start waking up in Jerry's body. I thought Jerry would be further along in his mobility, certainly at 9 months I expected a greater return. The closer we get to the one year mark the scarier it becomes because progress slows after 1 year. The greatest return is in the first year, you can continue to get return of some mobility after the first year but at a much slower rate. I have to keep reminding myself of all the improvements Jerry has made over the last 9 months, he really has come a long way. Although I wish he were closer to his goal of walking I am grateful for the movements that Jerry does have. Jerry's arms continue to get stronger by using the FES hand bike at Dominican Rehab. I wish he could use the hand bike 3 to 4 times per week, once a week slows progress in my opinion. I'm working on getting an FES Bike for our house which may or may not be successful as it is a very costly piece of equipment, $20,000. Jerry can now lift both arms and give a little wave, I'll have to post a video. Jerry has trace initiation in his left tricep but it's not strong enough to be useful at this point. If we could get Jerry's triceps to fire he could get strong enough to use a joystick control for his wheel chair and get rid of the chin drive, that would be sweet.

Life remains busy, Mondays are doctor appointment/errands day. Tue through Fri are therapy days, Sat & Sun for Jerry are chill/recoup days. For me Sat & Sun is get caught up on house cleaning, paper work, laundry, bills, grocery shop, etc. Dennis continues to work five days a week at his job and work on the weekends on the house. We are getting oh so close, I can't wait to get the bathroom done. Nine months of sponge baths for Jerry has taken it's toll on his skin, it's just not the same as a nice long shower or bath. Dennis took a break from the bathroom to get the roof put on since the rain's are headed our way, I'm glad to have that done. Dennis also poured the concrete pad for the AC unit. Although the AC is no longer priority at this point, heat is, they go hand in hand as they use the same ducting and at this point there is no heat in Jerry's room and it gets cold. We are using a little portable heater for his room which is working out OK but not a long term solution.

I think I may have mentioned in a previous post that Jerry was appointed by our district supervisor Mark Stone to the Commission on Disabilities. Jerry is a district 5 commissioner for the COD. Yesterday was the annual planning retreat for projects for the next year. Incidentally my cat Tina was also scheduled to be spayed as well as FES hand bike at Dominican for Jerry, we can't miss that. The plan was to drop Jerry at the retreat, stay a few minutes to get Jerry settled then run Tina to Scotts Valley to drop her at the vet and return to the retreat. Things just did not go well, amazingly we were able to get out of the house by 9:40 am, we had a 10 minute drive to Ben Lomond and everything seemed to be working out well. The street we were supposed to turn on was right off hwy9 in Ben Lomond. This is were things went a rye, we couldn't find the street, we drove all the way to Felton and did not see the street, turned around drove back to BL. Again we didn't find the street turned around drove all the way to Felton again and back to BL. Turns out we were misinformed the street was in Brookdale, at any rate we were 25 minutes late to the retreat, AWKWARD. It's not like you can sneak in unnoticed. Needless to say we missed the appointment for Tina, I had to leave the retreat and take Tina home. We had to leave the retreat early to make it to Jerry's FES appointment, which again was awkward disrupting the meeting to leave early. Jerry was not feeling well because he had been cold all morning and all his muscles had clinched up in his shoulders and neck, however he wanted to do FES. After getting Jerry all hooked up which takes about 20 minutes the bike began malfunctioning. We left feeling a little disappointed and headed to the pharmacy to pick a prescription that was droped off almost 2 weeks ago. This was our third visit to the pharmacy to pick up this script, wouldn't ya know they still don't have it. It was one of those days, just kinda wierd. Today was better but I'm so glad it's Friday, even though it was a long day getting down to Pleasonton it's nice to have the weekend to look forward to.

Please keep the healing prayers coming, we're still waitin on the miracle.

Much love,
Katie