Day 27

I have to start out saying sorry and thank you! I just realized I had a typo in my title last night, and am reading through past blogs and seeing all the typos and random sentences I have. And so far, you all have been very polite to not bring those to our attention, so thank you!

As for today, it's been a day filled with progress and a lot of awkward humor! I've said before elements of my life would make perfect Seinfeld episodes, and today was a perfect example. We'll get to that in a moment, but overall Jon has had another good day. He progressed today to a "quad" cane, one of the canes that has the four legs on the bottom. He didn't walk as far or as much, but the cane is more difficult for him to walk with. It doesn't offer as much support, so it forces him to put more weight on his left leg (I've decided to quit calling it his bad leg - I don't want him to develop a complex!) and shift his weight more than he has before. In his words, it's still not very graceful, but as far as I'm concerned, any time he can get up on two legs and keep moving, it's great. The knee still doesn't want to cooperate, but it will get there.

And we had another big first today. Jon was able to move his ankle for the first time! They had him lay on his stomach (which was another first), and lifted his left leg so it was bent at the knee. Then she had him push his toes down, and he did! So the therapist was encouraged with that movement and actually had him do his walking without his ankle brace to see if he could get some movement when he walked.

The walking came towards the end of the PT session, which had a bumpy start! We'll set the story up by explaining that his therapist really rode him hard today! So they had him face down on the mat while she worked on his legs, which was going very well. They then decided that they wanted him on all fours so they could put a big exercise ball under his stomach and have him roll on the mat. Here is where you have to use your imagination to visualize how it went from there. With him on his stomach, his therapist stood on the table, straddling his body so she could help him pull himself up on all fours. Well, of course, he can't move his left leg, so bringing it up at the knee to get on all fours is not an easy task. So with some assistance from some other therapists, his therapist was able to slowly get him up on his hands and knees. The problem came when she underestimated how tall he would be on all fours, and she quickly realized she was sitting on his back, her feet at that point off of the mat, and it looked more like a "horsie" ride than therapy. She quickly realized the session was going down hill, but I think she was laughing too hard to move by herself. And at this point, pretty much the whole gym is quite interested in Jon's new "therapy", and we became the show to watch. It was by far the funniest thing I have seen in a long time, and of course I forgot about the Flip Cam I had in my pocket, or you would be watching it instead of having to visualize it (and this is where you can refer to the above phrase "his therapist rode him hard today).

The therapists know about our blog and quickly said they had no doubt they would be featured in tonight's blog! And yes, they are. Once they had him up (and her off!), it went swimmingly, but it definitely gave the "gang" something to laugh about.

So it's nice to know that in the midst of what is by far one of the most difficult and emotional times of our lives, there is humor and fun to be found. So again, we find things to be grateful for.

We will update again tomorrow, but after today, just about everything will be fairly anticlimactic! Unless he jumps up and runs out of his wheelchair - then you will hear us cheering from Waco!