4th Injection & Safari World

Jerry had his 4th stem cell injection on Thursday evening which was a lumbar puncture. He felt a little bit of the warmth through his body that he had felt with his first lumbar puncture as well as  tingling over his whole body for 2 days. His biceps seem to be getting stronger and he's responding well to the therapies. Jerry gets the 5th injection this evening which will also be a lumbar puncture.

Jerry's decided to try and wean off most of his medications, he started the process a couple months before coming to Thailand. By June Jerry had weaned off all the pain medication he was taking. Some of you may remember the early months after the brain injury where Jerry was not sleeping, we had tried several different medications and combinations of medications to get him back to a normal sleep pattern, Jerry has been on a combination of 2 sleep medications for the past year. Since being in Thailand we gradually weaned him off one of the sleep meds, after a week off of that medication he began weaning off the second medication. Jerry has not had any sleep medication for about a week now and has been sleeping fine. A couple days ago Jerry began weaning from the antidepressant. Jerry was taking 3 pills a day but had reduced to 2 pills a day before coming to Thailand, for the past couple days he has only been taking 1 pill. It's a slow process but the goal is to be med free, I'm so happy that Jerry is finally on board with the idea of being med free.

Our Sunday outing was awesome, we went to Safari World which is a zoo but also a little similar to Marine World in CA. We had some logistics to work out with the driver, we were scheduled, then canceled, then with a little persuasion rescheduled. After taking us to Grand Place last Sunday the driver didn't feel safe transporting Jerry, because of the road conditions the chair bounces badly. With a little coercion they agreed that it would be OK if I transferred Jerry out of the wheelchair and into the van seat. It was actually a much smoother more comfortable ride for him. Jerry really enjoyed the Zoo, we closed the place down, we literally were the last two to leave, aside from the workers and some of them had left before us. It was so wonderful to have the entire facility be wheelchair accessible, it really made for a more enjoyable day. I take it back, there were two area's of non accessibility, but it wasn't that big of a deal. There's 3 miles of safari open area in which all the animals roam free together, the predators however are kept an area away from the other animals. The tour bus takes a 45 minute drive through the safari, unfortunately the bus was not accessible so we couldn't take the tour. The second issue was no family or single bathrooms only men or woman's bathrooms. Jerry wouldn't go in the ladies room so it was me going into the mens room, it wouldn't have been so bad accept they also didn't have handicap stalls so we had no privacy. It was just a little awkward catheterizing Jerry out in the open while men came in to use the urinal, you just never know when life is gonna throw you a mini adventure in the midst of your main adventure....lol. We didn't feel bad about missing the tour at all, we had a lot of other things to do in the zoo area, we really did have a wonderful day. The heat was really the only factor that put a little hindrance on the day but we just handled it and had fun anyway. Jerry absorbs heat but cannot release it by sweating, although I will say he is sweating in some areas now but not as much as he needs to help cool his body. I monitored Jerry's temperature throughout the day, he was good for half the day but once his temp reached 101 we found the only building in the park with air conditioning and sat in there for about 45 minutes until he cooled off. We continued our journey for another couple hours before Jerry's temperature reached 102.4. We found an area with misters and fans, I poured a bottle of ice water on Jerry's head, drenched his shirt then sat there for 45 minutes cooling off. After cooling off it was back to having fun, I tried to get Jerry to let me put a banana in his hand so he could feed the elephant and giraffe but he wasn't having it, he enjoyed watching me feed them though. One of the highlights was Jerry had a baby tiger in his lap that licked his face. The zoo was gorgeous, I thought of you Josh and Becky, you would have loved it for the plants alone, the whole park had the look and feel of a rain forest, very lush and green.

Upon our arrival back to the hospital we discovered the elevator was broken, we waited for about 30 minutes while the handyman/van driver tried to fix it, he determined it was out of commission until the repair service could come. Thank you Jesus we were not on the elevator when it got stuck, that would have been really, really bad, it's hot in the elevator and it took almost 20 hours to fix, I shudder to think. We had to find 4 men to carry Jerry up three flights of stairs in a sling, the van driver, the gate keeper in front of hospital, the night nurse and the father of one of the patients. Two spoke only Thai NO English, 1 spoke Thai and a few words of English but not much, the other spoke Spanish, no English what soever. Communicating a game plan for the carry was almost comical, but we managed to get him back up to our room unscathed, although the men were definitely huffing and puffing. Therapies were done in our room today while they finished fixing the elevator. Also the pool should be back in operation today, so aquatic therapy should resume tomorrow.

I forgot to mention that we have to move out of our beautiful spacious room tomorrow, so sad :( The room we're in should have cost an additional $2,000 however I didn't have to pay. When I scheduled Jerry's procedure I requested the single room which was included in the procedure, I didn't want to pay $2,000 extra for a suite however they didn't have a single room available so they gave me the suite free of charge until a single unit came available. A single room is available tomorrow and my room is booked for someone else, so tomorrow is moving day, oh well it was awesome while it lasted.

xoxo
Katie