Above picture: Gary on the ATV (he's in front)


May 19, 2007

Gary woke up sore, but not too sore for day number two of the adventure!

We got there somewhat before ten-thirty. As Gary pushed his way up the incline in the direction of where the activities he was interested in were being held, he recounted a conversation he had yesterday with his former PT, concerning a man his doctor had wanted him to speak to at the end of Day Program in Dec. The man was down about his condition and dubious that he was going to be able to do transfers and so forth on his own. But apparently, by the end of being an inpatient, he had learned this skill (not sure to what extent, since Gary needed assistance months after he was discharged as an inpatient). The man had also thought he was going to stay in a power chair, but evidently insurance wouldn’t pay for it and he ended up in a manual chair. “I don’t understand,” Gary said as he was puffing up a hill, “why anyone would want to want to be in a power chair unless he was too weak to operate a manual chair.” Gary then stopped and sat with his tongue hanging out, breathing hard. I gave him a look, and we started laughing. There are certainly some situations where he might be tempted to use a power chair!

We headed for the ATVs. All the utility vehicles, which are enclosed and thus offer lateral support, were taken, and there was a line for them. Though those would be safer, Gary didn’t want to sit around and wait, so one of the staff said they’d put him on a 4-wheeler, which is open, like a jet ski but on land, and see if that was a possibility. So they lifted Gary onto the 4-wheeler, and the guy sat behind Gary to provide support and kept his own hands on the handlebars with Gary’s to keep the vehicle steady. I asked how this differed from jet ski operation, and was told this was much more difficult for someone with Gary’s level of injury (and higher), that with the turns he would have a tendency to slide off. The ride is much more rough, less forgiving. Sudden ruts could throw him, since he has no muscles to keep himself upright.

So, they put a helmet on him and he took a slow ride. Which of course didn’t make it as fun as the jet ski! I got a picture of him on the ATV, and I will put it on the blog. http://drpeg2003.blogspot.com/

After his ATV ride, we made our way slowly back toward the bathrooms, where Gary did an IC (while I went to the car and worked on my story), and then we had lunch, Gary in the dining room, me in the van (too long a haul to carry my stuff there), where I also worked on my story some more.

Oh, and I had a question while we were walking around. Why is it that no matter which way we put our name tags on, which hung on a string around our neck (the tag having only one hole punched into it), our names never faced out? No one’s name ever faced out! What made it so the tags always chose to fall face down!?

Anyway, next we were off to the waterskiing site. The special ski was like a wide slalom ski with a frame or “cage for the butt” in the middle of the ski that they plunked Gary down into. His butt was lower than his legs, and the sides of the cage held him firmly in place, though not so firmly that it would keep him in place if he “wiped out.” To start off, they told him to bend forward and hang onto the frame down by his ankles. (His feet were put in a large rubber foot holder similar to what is found on a regular ski.) Once he was “up and running” behind the boat and felt he had his balance, he could reach for the ski rope in front of his feet and pop it free of the slot it was being held in (by a knot in the rope), and then ski along like a seated water skier. A group of volunteers picked him up on the ski (like an emperor in his litter ;-)) and put him in the water. Meanwhile, I went over to the boat dock and got on the boat that was going to tow him. We got situated, and the boat slowly picked up speed and when the slack was out the volunteers let go of his ski, and he was cruising! After only a minute or so, he got brave and reached for the rope, and he was a skier! It was really exciting to watch. We cheered him from the boat, and it was really obvious he was having a great ol’ time – a grin split his face from ear to ear the entire time he was out there! We kept trying to signal him to go over the wake, but he kept ignoring us ;-). The driver was a little “mean,” and gave him some rough water occasionally, and slowed down and speeded up, and curved from side to side, but Gary never wiped out. Oh, importantly for the sake of his mother’s heart, I should mention that the entire time a jet ski stayed close behind him in case he wiped out. Since he had passed the swim test, there should have been no problem if he did wipe out, but in any case, the jet ski would have been at his position in seconds and people would have jumped into the water off it to make sure he had righted himself, and to help him back into the ski. I asked the driver of the boat how often people wiped out, and he said if they were daredevils, they did it often.

Since we couldn’t persuade to get Gary over the wake on his own, the driver did a sharp turn that forced Gary over the wake, and he zoomed over it just fine. Oh, and I should mention that the driver of the boat was a C7 complete – a quadriplegic driving the boat (that made me feel safe ;-)). The guy obviously had fairly good use of his hands, but not for fine motor coordination.

Anyway, Gary never used any hand signals he was given (thumbs up for “go faster,” thumbs down for “go slower,” a slashing motion at the neck for “I’m in trouble, stop,” and patting the head for “I’m tired, take me in”). The people in the boat wondered if he’d been taught the signals, and I said he was, but using them assumed he was brave enough to take one hand off the rope – and it turned out that was exactly the reason why he didn’t use any of the signals! I think he might’ve skied for fifteen minutes or so, and then they headed him toward shore. I saw them toss the rope off the boat, and I saw Gary go down and flip over and try to right himself. A bunch of people then converged on him, so I don’t know if he made it over on his own before they came to help.

Anyway, he said it was a blast, the most fun thing he’d done. And he was so excited about it that he’s thinking of going to a waterski clinic later this summer. Only, we don’t know how far away it is (it’s at Lake Lanier, in Georgia).

Next, we decided to head back to the jet ski and ATV areas to see if he could do one of those again. Turned out there was a cancellation RIGHT THEN for the jet ski, and since on Friday Gary got rated as independent on it, we got to go out by ourselves for 25 minutes! On Friday I only got to be on it a total of 6 minutes! I was a little more used to it, but it was still on the scary side – until I discovered a strap on the seat (either I hadn’t noticed it yesterday or it wasn’t on the jet ski we used yesterday). Well, once I discovered that strap, I was ready to cook! I hung onto Gary with one arm, gripped the strap with the other hand, hugged the seat with my thighs, and told Gary to let it rip – in particular, I told him to aim for the waves. When we would go over some big bumps I would still let out a yell and bounce right up from the seat, but I wasn’t worried about flying off or taking Gary with me as long as I had that strap. Anyway, that was exciting and definitely the most fun *I* had, though a close second was watching the thrill Gary was getting while waterskiing.

After that, I asked if Gary wanted to do anything else. It was only 3 pm and dinner was three hours away (and the Daniels philosophy is, if you’ve paid for an outing, by God you’re going to get all the fun out of it you can even if it kills you.) Gary pointed out we didn’t have all that time to kill, however, since it would take him an hour and a half to wheel back to the van and change clothes. (And that wasn’t all that much of an exaggeration.) So, we went back to the van and he changed, me helping when requested, and the rest of the time I worked on the story idea I had had yesterday. That took us to about 4:20, but Gary didn’t feel like doing anything more. I gave my laptop to him and he read some stuff I had written, while I meditated. Rather, I fell asleep.

That took us to IC time, and then it was off to the steak and chicken banquet before going home. At our table at the banquet was a quadriplegic who had a very high level of injury; he was there with his mother. All I could think of was I was so glad Gary’s injury hadn’t been that bad. I felt terrible, but I could hardly look at the guy – his food falling out of his mouth, him taking agonizingly long to form a single barely understandable word. I kept looking elsewhere so he wouldn’t try to hold a conversation with me. I did exchange a couple of words with him – I asked his mom what the previous night’s social had been like, and he chimed in “Ice cream,” and I repeated “ice cream,” like I was talking to some backwards child. And I’m sitting there thinking, what must he feel, people ignoring him, him not able to communicate very well. I told Gary afterwards that I felt bad saying this, but I was so glad he hadn’t been injured like that, and he said he too had felt guilty but hadn’t been able to look at the guy. And we’re in better position than most to know what his life must be like.

Well, that was the end of our adventure weekend. Gary didn’t want to travel there and back for the Sunday morning activities. He wants to do it again next year, probably try some different activities. But I bet he’ll want to waterski again!

I didn’t get around to typing this up yesterday, and indeed spent much of today finishing fleshing out the story idea from Friday. Then I decided that while I had indeed made the final scene longer and brought together some earlier elements of the story, it was now a boring finish! So, I tossed it out, went back to the old version, cut out ten more lines from it, and now like it.

Oh, well.