September 7, 2006

We found out a few days ago that insurance won’t pay for a hospital table; since it is so much handier to have a table that rolls, we are going to pay for one ourselves (Gary looked into other tables that roll that aren’t billed as hospital tables, but the weren’t any cheaper). Today we found out that insurance also won’t pay for the hospital bed or mattress, which if we get them ourselves would come to $3000. Gary hasn’t decided what to do about that yet – he is worried that at this point his shoulders aren’t doing well enough that he’d be able to do all that swinging of them that would be required for him to turn himself on a regular bed. I suspect he is going to want to keep the hospital bed and mattress for a while – I guess we’ll sell it some time in the future.

For the first time, he took the LETA bus to school – fortunately they did come up our drive. I was a little dismayed to see they don’t secure him in the bus as well as he was secured in the Shepherd bus. In the Shepherd bus his chair was anchored firmly by straps and locks to the floor, plus he had a shoulder and seat belt around him – it took several minutes to get him all secured. In the LETA bus, his wheelchair was quickly secured by two straps put around the frame of his chair and attached to the floor (at first the driver put the straps around his wheels, but Gary told her to put them around the frame because the wheels could come off), and there was no shoulder and seat belt that was attached to the bus – all he had was his own chest and seat belts. Evidently Gary thought that was good enough.

The garage builder came today to take pictures for advertising purposes to potential clients and to collect his final payment. He seems a very nice guy, and he said to let us know of any problems or questions we might have in the future about the garage.

Thanks go to Gary’s Aunt Joyce and Uncle Roland – they sent us a letter and a lap blanket. The blanket looks like it could be handmade, but we’re not sure.