Time to catch you up on recent news. If you're only interested in pictures, scroll down, for about a dozen new ones! Gary was at Adventure Skills Workshop last weekend, and I remembered the camera this time, so there are lots of pics of him ziplining and jet skiing and water skiing and ATV'ing and scuba diving!


May 5, 2008

Gary made it up and down our steep driveway for the very first time, accomplishing goal number one on his list of summer goals. Though he had to take a little rest when he reached the top, he said it wasn’t hard at all. He noted he wouldn’t have been able to do it last year. He has much more upper body strength now.

So now he can go get the mail! ;-)

May 11, 2008

Gary did a wheelchair-to-floor transfer (“wheelbarrow” style). I did hang onto his belt buckle, so he vows to try it again soon without me touching him. But I didn’t give him any help at all getting onto the futon from the floor. So this the first time he’s done that entirely by himself!

May 16-17, 2008

Time for another Adventure Skills workshop, at Camp ASCCA in Jackson’s Gap, Al! The first thing Gary noticed was that getting up that big long hill to get to registration wasn’t as bad as last year – though not a piece of cake. We got him signed up for confidence course (wall climbing and zipline), water skiing, jet skiing, and scuba. No sign-up sheet to ride an ATV, you just show up at the site. We hadn’t rushed to arrive, so after sign-up, Gary did an IC and then it was time for lunch! It was interesting being back in an environment where the typical conversation starters were “What’s your level of injury?” and “How did it happen?” One of the guys we had lunch with was one of the drivers of a boat for the waterskiers. I remembered him from last year. He is a C-6, C-7 quadriplegic and (as you would hope in a driver) has some gross use of his hands, but cannot do fine manipulations. We learned he is the World Champion in 2 water ski events! The jump event and the slalom event (there is a third event, “trick”). In the jump, with the boat going 32 mph, he sailed over 50 feet! For the slalom, the skiers must wend their way around buoys. The maximum speed the boat is allowed to go is 36 mph. The man, Bill, said that there are many people of a similar skill level, so to determine the winner, they keep shortening the rope the skiers are being pulled on. He won by making it around 3 buoys on a 38 ft. rope, half the length of the usual rope. He said the rope was shorter than the distance from the buoy to the boat, so that to get around the buoy he had to use his body to make up the difference in length.

The waterski he used was similar to the one Gary was on, but narrower, so more maneuverable (and less stable). You can scroll down to the next blog entry to see pictures of Gary in his waterski.

But, waterskiing wasn’t Gary’s first event; the confidence course was. First we lost confidence in the map they gave us to find the site: Gary said the map was like a Rorschach test. We turned left when we were supposed to go right, and started down a long steep hill. Gary had to go pretty slow, keeping his hands on his wheels to brake him, so I went ahead to see if I could find out where we were supposed to be. I ran into a volunteer who was supposed to be one of the people running the course, and she told us to go back the other way. Well, that meant Gary had to go UP that long steep hill. I went ahead, and I discovered that there was another even steeper, though shorter, hill coming up. But I found another path that would be easier, though longer in distance (as opposed to the time it would probably take him to travel it). I told Gary this, but he told me he had just passed another volunteer who said the hill coming up wasn’t as steep as it looked, and that it was less steep than what he’d just come up. Right, I said, she’s on two feet, what does she know. Well, Gary decided to try the hill. And guess what? . . . As Gary inched his way up the hill, he grunted out, “She’s nuts.”

So now that Gary’s all warmed up for exercise ;-) it’s time for the confidence course. And here I lost confidence in the staff running this particular event! After he got all decked out in harnesses and kneepads and helmet, they gave him a rope with a movable horizontal bar on it (sorry, I’m sure there’s a name for it, but I don’t know it). You curl your wrists down and push the bar up the rope, then you flex your wrists back and that locks the bar and you pull yourself up using it. Nice theory. After about 5 minutes of him vigorously working away at this, he’d gone about 6 inches. Only about another 30 feet to go. Obviously they didn’t have something right, and they told him to forget the bar and pull himself up hand over hand. Well, he did make his way up the rope that way, but . . . somehow they had something else screwed up, and he wasn’t balanced right in the harnesses. His body started angling so that soon he was horizontal instead of vertical, and then he was declined to the horizontal! I was just about freaking. I suppose he was safe enough with all those harnesses on, but I kept having visions of him falling out of the harnesses and landing on his head! I’m sure the volunteers didn’t appreciate my anxiety-ridden voice squeaking, “Why is he going up upside down? That didn’t happen last year!”

But at last he was on the tower. I ran to the other tower where he’d finish and took pictures of him ziplining (see pics below). And then what does he do after these death-defying feats? He gets back in his wheelchair, goes down a short steep ramp that is the first part of this exit tower, and slides out of his wheelchair! He said he had so many straps on him, he forgot he hadn’t put his seat belt on. Oops! Fortunately, there wasn’t enough room for him to slide all the way out of the chair, and four volunteers got him back into it. They then suggested he let them back him down the rest of the ramp. He took them up on it :-D

Next up was jet skiing, but to do that he first had to pass a water test (that he passed it last year didn’t count). So they took him in his wheelchair close to the lake and then several volunteers lifted him out of the chair into the water (see pic). He passed, turning himself from a face-down position to face-up after they touched him on the shoulder after 20 secs. Most everybody who tried, passed – only saw a few bodies floating on the lake.

So then they got him on the jet ski (see pic), and he and a volunteer went around the lake to get him “checked off” so he could take me out. But, I didn’t like the jet ski we were on. No strap to hang onto. There was a depression way below the seat I was supposed to hang onto. Well, my arms weren’t really long enough, so I had to ride with my back all hunched over and my head banging into Gary’s back (I was afraid I was either going to bruise him or knock some of my neck vertebrae out of alignment; he said he didn’t feel a thing – dark humor). I was unable to see a thing.
:-(

Next came water skiing, Gary’s favorite event! I got a bunch of shots of it, see below. The driver, a different quad than the one we’d had lunch with, was very impressed with Gary’s skills, said he had great starts and kept a good skiing position. Right after he said he was letting Gary ski longer than he had anyone else, Gary wiped out! Gary was probably getting a little tired about that point, because shortly after that, he wiped out again – though he was being more dare-devilish this year, going over the wake instead of staying right behind the boat. When he went down, he nearly lost his suit! He said it came down to his knees and the volunteer from the jet ski (who was following behind him) had to help him pull the trunks up. I didn’t see any little white butt floating by from my vantage point in the boat, however.

Naturally he got some war wounds – after they got him back into his wheelchair they discovered a gash on his leg and one of his little toenails had been ripped right out! Guess that’s a good time not to be able to feel such things. And just tonight (May 22) we discovered his big toe is all black and blue. Despite that, he had a blast and is thinking of going to one of the water ski clinics this summer at a lake near the Atlanta airport.

Well, that was enough for the day. So we went back to the van to change, then Gary did his IC, we had dinner there, and then we left for home.

Late the next morning (Saturday), Gary went to the ATV site. They had a new one this year, and he got to ride that. He said he could tell it was much more stable and he felt a lot more confident. A little too confident, evidently. He said the volunteer riding with him told him several times to slow down. He asked her if she was scared. She said, a little. :-D

Pics of him on the ATV are also below.

Next we had lunch, then it was time for scuba! He went to the van to change into his suit, and he got his swimsuit on all by himself! (Getting pants on while sitting in the wheelchair is something he still hasn’t mastered, and this was the first time he’d gotten on any type of pants all the way on entirely by himself. Long pants will be harder, of course, and when he went to put on his long pants after the days activities, I helped with the last little bit.)

At the pool, the volunteers seemed to be trying to talk him into letting them just pick him up and carry him into the water, but he wanted to do a wheelchair to deck transfer, and he did (see pic below). Then they got him in mask and tanks, gave him some basic instruction and made sure he was comfortable in the water, then let him go swim underwater; he could raise and lower the level he was swimming at by using an air pump connected to the tanks. After a while, someone brought him an “underwater scooter” (a Seadoo) to try. All he had to do was hang on and it pulled him around under the water. Only, at one point he somehow got partway flipped over and was practically zooming around underwater on his back. First the confidence course now this – had some thing during this workshop about being upside down, I guess. (James Bond, he’s not.)

Next, we went back to the jet skis, and this time they had one with a strap available, and I had a blast too, being able to hang onto the strap and look (blindly, without glasses) over his shoulder and galloping over the waves (the fast trotting was the hard part). He got up over 50 mph! We later wondered how stable those things were and how fast we dared take it. When we got back to the launching pad, a volunteer told Gary he had hair that said, “I just had a really really good time!" Because of the wind and water spray, it was sticking straight up like a troll’s. He wouldn’t let me take a picture of it, though ;-)

Well, that was enough gallivanting for the day. We went back to the van for a break. Gary did some research, read in the Readers Digest, I worked on my novel (2/3 of the way through this revision). Then came IC time and dinnertime and time to go home.

Tigger was unhappy that we’d both been gone for most of the past couple days, and he climbed into Gary’s hospital bed with Gary and stayed there throughout Gary’s bedtime routine – he hasn’t gotten into bed with Gary in ages. Blackjack was just happy to see his meal tickets were home. (Speaking of Tigger, we are still struggling to get his weight up. At the vet’s suggestion, we supplement his cat food diet with people food – or is it vice versa? So daily he gets grilled salmon or tuna steak or scallops or steak, and the occasional filet mignon or chilean sea bass. He is not nearly as appreciative of this as he should be.)

Thus ended Adventure Skills! You da man, Gary!

On Monday, we traveled to Birmingham where I got a second opinion on my knee (torn meniscus (cartilage)). I am resigned to having surgery on it. I tried for 13 months to get it to improve by rehab. I make slight improvement, then the slightest thing can set it back. I can’t go up and down more than a few stairs, can’t walk faster than a mosey, etc. So, I give up. Am trying to decide whether to go back and forth to Birmingham three more times (for the surgery and 2 follow up appointments), a 2+ hour trip each way, to this guy who regularly does a significant number of these surgeries, or to stay local to a competent surgeon. The surgery is, on the scale of these things, one of the simplest ones (arthroscopic, where they cut out the part of the cartilage that is torn and being pinched in the joint). I feel like getting it over soon.

Anyway, had to wait for 2 hours before seeing this guy. I swear they make you wait that long so you’re tired and your resistance is worn down so you’ll agree to anything they want. But actually, I did like the guy once I got in to see him.

Today, I had an appointment with my family doctor. The previous two visits, he had found me very low in vitamin D ( 7 and 14) and hypothyroid (4+ and 5.6). This time my D was at 28. Normal is 32 to 100, so at least I’m making progress on that front. Besides the vit D supplement I’ve been taking, I’ve recently been able to tolerate soy milk, and at least the Silk brand is enhanced with vit D, so I think that is helping. The thyroid was a 4.0. Still low, but improved. I’m going to wait and see what it is next time to see if this is a positive trend before going on a thyroid med.

One of these past few days, Gary discovered that going backwards down the steep part of the driveway is easier than facing front (I was with him when he tried this, of course), so that will be the way he does it.

Okay, now you can scroll down and look at the pics! ;-) If you click on them, they will enlarge.