End of July Update

As the calendar turns once again and Back to School sales are in full swing, it is time to give you an update on Rand. In a nutshell, all is well: his blood viscosity is right on the nose, he's healthy as a horse and has been very good about healthy eating. He will be weighed next week so we can see if there is any weight loss. He is a puzzle maniac and has a stack of glued puzzles completed. A friend made a great suggestion and some of the puzzles are now under plastic and used as placemats at the dining table! The other residents get a kick out of seeing which one they get on any given day. He can complete 300 piece puzzles with a lot of help. One to two hundred pieces are best. I think I've bought every one on eBay!

His physical therapy continues twice a month. He is now walking an obstacle course each time - on uneven surfaces, stepping over objects, stepping up onto platforms and down the other side, using both legs alternately to stay balanced and having to use his sense of distance, logic and experience to get from point A to point B. The obstacle course is set up between the parallel bars so sometimes Rand uses that to support himself and sometimes he uses his quad cane. His walking has improved so much in the last couple of months! In occupational therapy he is required to put a lot of pressure on his right hand/arm. We can see some movement in his right bicep and feel some strength in his lower arm, too, when he does that. The therapist has him using his left arm to do tasks while balancing himself on the right. I'm not sure he really realizes how much weight he is supporting with his right side. Either way, he has come so, so far!! Thuan continues to work with him every day. Every Tuesday morning, Emily, the music therapist works with him for an hour. Rand loves it! Rand continues to be the prize demo patient for Recovering Function so gets a double dose of excellent therapy frequently. He is in the middle of another two hour session every day for eight consecutive days.

Today we met with Jennie, the Speech/Language Pathologist, about the speech generating device we called Mo. Her life has been chaotic the last few months plus she has changed jobs, so little has been done about the grant. I think we are back on track and I hope we can submit the paperwork by the end of August. She will not be working with Rand as a speech therapist any more but she will stay with us through the grant process and on into the training phase. So much time has passed since Mo was around that it is hard to assess where Rand is with the whole notion. Jennie is now in the administrative end of the outpatient treatment program so will no longer be seeing clients. We were lucky to have had her when we did.

Friends from another part of Calif. visited us a couple of weeks ago. It was such fun to have them here. Another couple from So. Calif. will be visiting near the end of August. It has been years since we've seen them also, so it will be great to have them here.

Recently, the husband of a former colleague who now lives near Phoenix, died suddenly and unexpectedly. She asked a couple of us to spend a few days with her. It was a tough time, a fun time, a nostalgic time. There were lots of tears, laughs, serious talks, plus some shopping, plenty of time in the pool. It was a healing time for me, maybe more so than for her. I heard myself in many of her comments, laments, and wishful thinking. Meg told me to use her as a gage of how far I have come. Boy, oh, boy - I have come a long, long way in the last eighteen months. I'm proud of myself and how I have gotten through this life changing event. I still have a long ways to go, but I think I'm doing well.

In about two weeks, Rand and I will celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary! I hope we can do something special that day.

Keep Rand close.

Love,
Connie