Random observations/notes...

• Although he wasn't here for her first day of school, John was very much present for Nora's moving up ceremony and last day of school (a half day and we took her to a new cheese shop/deli in town for lunch):

  

  Our new 1st grader!

• I never realized until after John's accident just how often the helicopter lands at Memorial Hospital (a Level II Trauma center, 3 blocks from our house). You can hear the chopper plain as day throughout my house and yard.
• Wednesday night, the tornado sirens went off just. after. we. left Nora's room... but the good news is, we got to do a drill and we had our first time getting everyone to the basement since John's accident. We made it in 3 minutes (I think -- I wasn't actually timing us), Nora did everything we had outlined for her when we discussed it a few weeks ago, we remembered everything, and the cats let me catch them (a minor miracle!). The great news: no tornado, so just some extra reading time.
• Nora is loving being home for the summer with Ma and Pa -- we're playing an extended game of Little House on the Prairie. And somehow, she still finds it exciting, 2 weeks in, when I take her to my office three times a week while John does his exercises at Rolfs.
• John and I are catching up on movies we've missed. Two we've enjoyed so far are Butter and Lincoln (very different stories with intriguing thematic overlaps).
• And with the blessing of John's doctor and PT, he's tried driving in a parking lot. He's able to maneuver from the brake to gas pedal (and more importantly, back again!) and he can control the wheel, so now he just has to adjust to new blind spots and get acclimated to driving in traffic.

Most importantly, Nora and I are planning to spoil him silly on Sunday...

June 1, 2013

The 10-month mark came and went without fanfare on Thursday (I was caught up in a work deadline which I actually made, with half a day to spare!), but today we joined another celebration: our neighbor's son (the one we passed the Lourdes water on to) has been home from the hospital for the past month or so, and today they had a welcome home party for him. It was great to see him outside of a hospital setting and even better for Nora to meet him since she's been asking God to help him heal for the past five months. M. even graciously posed for a photo with us (and his mom's ok'ed me posting it):

John continues to do his exercise routine at the campus gym three times a week. Nora and I take him for an after-dinner walk a couple of times a week, as well, and he's built up enough stamina to make it around our block (which is actually half a mile).

I'll close with an update from Nora: "Daddy is doing good. He's walking faster and a lot better."

May 6, 2013

Today, on the invitation of one of the health teachers at St. Joe's, John visited some of the sophomore health classes who are currently studying the nervous system to talk about his experience with his SCI. Since I'm his chauffeur, I volunteered myself to join him, and we spent the morning talking to the young women about his accident and what the rehab was like for him, for me, and for our family.

What a wonderful experience this was! The students listened avidly and asked thoughtful questions of us. And in all of our years of teaching, this might have been the first time we saw each other in action in a classroom and got to "teach" together. For me, to see John before students, interacting with them in front of a classroom, made me very happy.

It was also a privilege to explain to them that John's recovery has been miraculous and to share how comforted we've been by our family and friends in NJ and our community here in South Bend. Knowing that our experience serves as a small model for them, a witness to the blessings that God has bestowed, offers us another small piece of healing.

April 30, 2013

Spring has sprung... We sent Nora to school in shorts today (well, really a skort, 'cause the girl's just got to have a skirt on). I wore a sundress to my last day of classes. And I had two important realizations as I left O'Shag for lunch: 1) I did it -- I managed to teach all my classes this year (and even find moments of joy and peace in my classroom) and this year's all over but the examinating and grading; and 2) today marks the 9-month anniversary of John's accident.

 He's been discharged from therapy, as they made all the progress they could there. He has a strict exercise routine that he has to follow to avoid regression of the function he's regained. There are physical limitations that we're all three of us learning to live with, each in our own way. Lots of questions about the future are wide open right now. But we know some definites. He is here with me and Nora, right where he belongs. And when I remember where he was 9 months ago -- paralyzed from the neck down, unable to swallow, and barely breathing on his own, I lose my breath. So tonight, as he eats the dinner I will cook later on and breathes in the fresh spring air, we will pause to thank God for the blessings embedded in the journey of the past 9 months.

3/26/13

We saw John's South Bend neurosurgeon for a follow-up today. His latest set of x-rays confirm that the fusion is holding strong, and the bone is growing very well around the hardware. At this point, John won't need more images taken unless new problems present themselves, though he'll always need to be protective of his neck.

The doctor also tested his reflexes. Consistent with central cord syndrome, the reflexes in his hands (measured at his finger tips) are worse than those in his legs (measured at his knees).

The spinal decompression is complete (that was the objective of John's surgery -- removing the C4 disc prevented further injury to the spine and we were waiting for the swelling to completely subside), and there's no reason to expect further damage to his spine. He has hit a plateau in his rehabilitation, and at 7 1/2 months out, we have a good sense of how much function he is going to regain. While the recovery has greatly slowed at this point, changes are still possible for up to three years after his accident, though, and he has to maintain a strict exercise schedule to not lose his hard-won gains.

Our next appointment with this doctor in July (at the one-year mark).

minor housekeeping note -- the comments are fixed

Hi everyone -- several of you have told me you can't comment on the blog posts. I've finally figured out how to open up comment to everyone, not just those with gmail addresses. So I *think* you can comment if you want (not that you have to -- but we love reading them!).

3:1 (aka 3/20/13)

At one point in the long weeks leading up to Christmas, when John had sort of adjusted to being home and was into the rhythm of therapy every other day, but felt like he wasn't seeing fast enough progress in returning to feeling like himself, his OT told us the 3:1 rule. It takes 3 days at home, she explained, for every one day in the hospital to return to your pre-hospitalization state of health. At the time, I was NOT interested in hearing a projection that far out and did not calculate when that would happen (this was probably when I heard the radio DJ say something about how Robin Roberts was in the hospital for 4 weeks and they couldn't imagine being in the hospital that long -- and I swerved as I yelled, "Try imagining more than twice that long!!!"). Sometime in January, when we realized that John wasn't able to return to work yet, I did count out those days.

And today we’ve hit that special 3:1 day -- he has now been home three times as long as he was away in the hospital.  Looking at his face, he looks like he's back to where his general health was when he had his accident. This is not to say that he's close to completely recovered -- that path still winds ahead of us. But he looks like himself. 

At this point, he has to keep up his amazing efforts at rehabbing to recover as much pre-accident strength as he can and to train more muscles to regain function. He needs to build up stamina -- he still sleeps several hours during the day, in addition to a full night's sleep -- because he still suffers from significant fatigue just from his ADLs (activities of daily living), and he deals with pain on a daily basis. And he has to learn to live with the differences between where he gets and where he was on July 29th, including the side effects of the SCI that are most likely permanent, like clonus:

a series of involuntary, rhythmic, muscular contractions and relaxations. Clonus is a sign of certain neurological conditions, particularly associated with upper motor neuron lesions involving descending motor pathways, and in many cases is, accompanied by spasticity (another form of hyperexcitability). … clonus causes large motions that are usually initiated by a reflex [from the ubiquitous Wikipedia]

and tremors in his hands.

But we are blessed and we know it: the destination we are headed toward is so much  better than it could have been as to be scary -- it is a miracle that is daunting to be worthy of. A sacred thought to ponder as we enter into the days leading up to Good Friday and Easter...

So I'll close with a wish for you all: Happy 1st day of spring! May it bring you all the rejuvenation you seek.