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