Thursday, July 15, 2010

2nd Annual Follow Jerry.....to a Ballgame!

Mark your calendar RIGHT THIS SECOND for Sunday, Aug 15th , 5pm!

In partnership with the San Jose Giants we will be joining forces to support the MacCallister Family with a benefit baseball game! While the San Jose Giants take on the Modesto Nuts, we'll take over the stadium (literally!) and fill it to overflowing with the friends, family and community that has been supporting this family for these last months.

Invite your friends and family to join us on Sunday, Aug 15th for a 5pm game. If you've never yet been to a minor league ball game, this is a great time to try it out. The venue is extremely family friendly, and kids (and grownups) of all ages will enjoy the feel of the stadium, the great food and seats that are close to the action. Not only can you hear the crack of the bat, but you can also hear the muttering of the players. Depending on the game, this can get pretty interesting......

But here is the best part of all. Tickets are $7 each, and $6 will go straight to supporting Jerry and his recovery fund.

For now, tickets are only available online--just click on the link to the right and we will get your tickets in the mail.

If you would like to have a stack of tickets to sell to your coworkers, friends or family, please email us at ballgame@followingjerry.com and we will get those to you right away.

Please join us and Follow Jerry to a Ballgame! It's gonna be great.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Have you noticed?

I thought I would point out a few changes in case you haven't noticed, we've added a sponsor page as well as a fund raising page, you can access them by clicking on the links above Sponsor Page or Fundraising. I'll be adding an upcoming events page so keep checking back to stay updated in what we are up to and how we are doing in our fund raising efforts for China.

We're also doing the San Jose Giants fund raiser again this year, you can click the flier in the upper right corner for more information.  We could use some help selling tickets, if you would like to help send an email to katie@followingjerry.com, include how many tickets you would like to sell and contact info.

Monday, July 5, 2010

July 4th

Happy Independence Day!

Ordinarily we would be heading to the beach about now, the car loaded as if we were camping for three days, boogie boards, BBQ, ez-up, chairs, fire wood for evening bonfire and enough food to feed an army.  It's been a tradition for us for many years to spend the day on the beach, body surfing, playing volleyball, and barbecuing.  When the sun goes down the bonfire goes up, we break out the smores and watch the fantastic display of fireworks. I will miss our 4th of July tradition greatly, the beach is no longer an option for Jerry, it wouldn't be fun for him sitting idle on the beach while everyone around him was having a great time.  It's time to begin a new tradition, swimming at the pool and barbecuing with friends and family.

We've had a busy month between Jerry, Jessica and I we've had a lot of doctor appointments.  Jerry still has nausea everyday and we are no closer to figuring out why then we were a year ago.  Jerry had another ultrasound and x-ray which both came back normal. On one hand you hope that test results come back normal because you don't want there to be anything wrong, on the other hand you hope the test results come back showing something wrong at least then you would know what your dealing with and hopefully know how to fix it. There is one medication that Jerry has been on since two weeks after the accident which he takes to control nerve pain.  Jerry decided to go off of this med in hopes that it's been causing the nausea however no such luck, he's been off of it for about a month now and still has daily nausea.  Jerry's been experiencing some pretty strange sensations since going off the nerve pain med, he believes it is nerve pain but I'm not so sure.  He felt like his big toes were burning and hurting badly the odd thing is he had ingrown toenails on both big toes that I had trimmed back a few days prior.  He felt like his back was burning as well as sever abdominal cramping that he said felt like someone was punching him in the gut repeatedly.  I felt it was encouraging that he was feeling these things because it is well below the level injury and he generally can't feel anything below the chest.  Jerry didn't see it that way and he makes a good point, "What good does it do me to feel my toes, I still can't move them and it hurts." At any rate the nerve pain became unbearable so Jerry started taking a new nerve pain med, so far the new med is working OK. 

Jerry has been riding the Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) leg cycle at SCI-FIT for the past year, he also rode the FES arm cycle at Dominican Rehab, unfortunately we are no longer covered by insurance to do the arm cycle.  Jerry has not ridden the arm cycle for about 3 1/2 months and his arms are much weaker now then they were when he was doing the arm cycle. The FES cycle has been pivotal in keeping Jerry's muscles strong and preventing atrophy, which is why we felt very strongly that Jerry needs this equipment at home.  At $20,000 dollars it was a huge investment, we had enough money from past fund raising to pay for about half and then financed the rest.  We are so excited to get the bike and should have it in house by mid August, we'll definitely post pictures when we get it.

Jerry had his 21st birthday last Saturday, he had some friends over to play computer games where they network their computers together.  I think they spent more time networking them and getting set up then they did actually playing the game.  Unfortunately Jerry cut the party short because that was when he was having all the strange nerve pains and he felt like someone was hitting him in the stomach all he wanted to do was get in bed. 

Jessica graduated high school 3 1/2 weeks ago I can't believe the baby is out of school, man I'm getting old.  It's going to be very weird not having any kids at the high school, we have had kids there for the last 10 years. Wow!

Jessica had surgery to repair the damage to her knee on Monday, she is so not a happy camper.  She had 2 tears in her meniscus in which the surgeon couldn't repair, the best he could do was clean up the tears and smooth it out.  Jessica also had her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) replaced, the surgeon removed her ACL and replaced it with a cadaver ligament.  Jess is bummed out, living on the couch for the past week.  Jess can't get down the stairs to her room so she has been sleeping on the couch.  During the day she has to spend 6 hours on a machine that does range of motion bending her leg up and down. In addition she has leg exercises she has to do, she's not having any fun.


I started this post yesterday on the 4th however had a hard time finishing as we had company for the weekend. I keep saying I will post more often however I get so busy I never seem to get it done.  Thank you to all who still continue to stay with us offering kind words, prayers and support. We appreciate you all so much.

Love to all,
Katie