Mar 19, 2007

Gary’s mom continues to progress. She has been walking with the aid of a walker and a therapist close by for quite some time now. She is in a rehab/nursing home facility, where she can stay for thirty days. She gets rehab M-F.

Mar 20, 2007

Something weird is going on with the car title. The dealership that modified the car claim they haven’t gotten the title from the dealership they bought the car from, and the latter claimed they sent it to them. And we can’t get license tags for the car until the title is tracked down. Sheesh!

Gary got a brochure from Shepherd about this year’s Adventure Skills Workshop in mid-May, a Friday late morning to Sunday early afternoon. Gary wants to go. Cost is $150 for participants, which they make sure to spell out are the disabled applicants, and $140 for other family members. This is to cover meals, lodging, a T-shirt, and for the participants, instruction. I guess this means I pretty much only get a lousy T-shirt out of it ;-), since it doesn’t sound like I get to do the activities, unless I go swimming on my own (it’s at Lake Martin, a good-sized lake). I’m not even sure if I’d lodge there, because there are only a limited number of private rooms for couples, and I told Gary my love stops at being housed in a group cabin (which made him laugh).

The activities are: water skiing, zip line, jet skiing, riflery/skeet, scuba diving, climbing wall, all-terrain vehicles, swimming, canoeing/kayaking, water polo, rugby (!), tubing, fishing, golf, archery.


Mar 21, 2007

Gary had his driving lesson today. For the first half hour, the state guy readjusted the hand controls of our car. Now the acceleration/brake bar has been rotated upward so it is closer to the turn signal, and Gary can easily reach the turn signal without removing his hand from bar. The guy also moved the entire apparatus upward, more in line with the steering wheel, so now there is more knee clearance, and he also tightened it so it wasn’t as wobbly (why the people who adapted the van, who supposedly have been doing this for ten years, didn’t know to do this, we don’t know).

But for the actual driver’s lesson, Gary got in the state guy’s van, which has dual controls in case the guy needed to override Gary on something. Because of insurance requirements, I wasn’t allowed to ride along. Rats! (Or maybe they wouldn’t let me come along because they were afraid I’d do too much screaming ;-).) Gary was going to go home in that van, so I left to go home myself. Gary came home about an hour later. He said they’d driven along 280 (in fact, they passed the place where he had his accident), then to the interstate, then to College Street, then the math department, then they took the back way home. Gary “passed,” and the guy is filling out the papers necessary for Gary’s new license – all they have to do is add the restriction that he must drive with hand controls. The guy does want Gary to drive with a torso-chest restraint, however, and is having one ordered for him (the guy kept calling it something that sounded like “grandma,” which I thought was a little weird, but then he pronounced it “gran-mar,” named after the manufacturer or something) . It will fit over the driver’s seat and will be essentially be two velcro straps that wrap around Gary’s chest. This is so that when he makes his turns, especially sharp ones, he won’t lose his balance sideways (since he doesn’t have those abdominal muscles). The guy noted that Gary was occasionally in need of that extra support.

The guy’s assistant is going to drive around with Gary tomorrow morning, just so Gary can get more practice in. Gary still hopes for us to leave next Weds. to begin the journey to Rolla, Mo. for the math conference. Gary will probably be fine for the trip – me, we’ll probably have to tie to the roof of the van. I am so bummed out! About two weeks ago, I started feeling a little pain in my right knee. I have been doing a lot of kneeling, because that is the most comfortable position for my back/leg problem (and yes I have one of those chairs that has the kneeling pads on them, but it still puts too much pressure on my butt (sciatic nerve), so I just kneel on the floor on a rolled up exercise mat). But I have also been doing lunges in my exercise program since last August, since they were recommended by my trainers (and my current chiropractor read through my program and thought it was a very good one for my back/leg problem and general strength conditioning) and I recently had been trying to walk a little faster during part of my daily walk (though Michel and Mimi occasionally meet up with me and blaze by me), and actually it seemed to be the latter that affected the knee. Anyway, one night about two weeks ago I was scheduled to do my exercise program. I was feeling tired and wanted to put it off until the next day, but then I went ahead and did it. Big mistake. Big knee pain the next day. So I cut out the leg exercises and the fast walking, then cut out arm exercises too because they still put added weight on the leg. And then last Sunday when I was doing an easy walk, the pain got really bad. And I was still ten minutes away from my car. So since then I have been doing no exercising except for an exercise Gary did for his knee when he had problems. But since that walk the knee hurts really bad to bend it, say 90 degrees. So I can’t kneel anymore. And I can’t sit on my stability ball for long, because that bends the knee to much (and that was my second favorite position to be in). And I can’t sit on a regular chair – haven’t been able to do that for quite some time. And I can’t lie supine because that affects my back/leg, as, again, has also been going on for quite some time. So I stand up for a while while working on my novel, and then I have to lie face down to recover (standing also makes my knees and back of my legs sore after a while). I even went on the web to see if I could find something that I could lay prone on and still work on my laptop, but I really didn’t know how to search for such (I tried “proning table” and “proning bed”). And now, for some reason, my entire right side feels wrenched. GRRRRR!!!!!!!!