Well, today Mark had a wonderful day. His session on the Lokomat went very well even though the machine stopped for no reason and Mark was left hanging in the air like a pinata (as he calls himself). And again, he took to the parallel bars after the Loko session and walked back and forth three times, rested a bit and then did it again twice.
As for the rest of the day, he made the rounds of all the therapists and this afternoon attended the promotion ceremony for our friend Anthony C. Thompson, Sr. Anthony is a Naval medical corpsman who was seriously wounded in Iraq in April 2007. Anthony's wife and son, Ivonne and AJ, who I have spoken about many times, live with us at Fisher House. Their family members were here as well as many military men, including the corpsman who is credited with saving Anthony's life when the bridge he and his Marines were patrolling was blown up by a suicide bomber. The Navy saw fit to promote Anthony, even though he is unable to take the necessary tests usually required for promotion. It was a very moving ceremony and I did not make it through with dry eyes. For that matter, most people didn't.
One of the best presentations of the afternoon was to our little (note the possessive "our") AJ. He was officially made an honorary Department of Veterans Affairs employee and was given his very own ID name tag, with photo. He is now the President of the Smile Squad by the Office of the Director. We are sure a couple of rules were bent for this presentation, but he loves the name tag and chewed on it the rest of the afternoon!!!
To see news coverage of our dear friends, go to the following link:
http://www.wfla.com/
Monday, August 4, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
We have had a busy few days. Mark goes from therapy to therapy just about all day long, starting from 8 a.m and ending at 3 p.m. usually. He is up and dressed by 7 a.m and works his way from room to room until about Noon, has lunch, a quick nap and back at it again at 2 p.m.
Today he had his usual Lokomat therapy at 8 a.m. and then walked in the parallel bars and again, it was better than anything previously done. He had a golf "outing" again this morning and did much better than last week. He really is enjoying this and it should be a regular Friday morning event.
Jess and I took advantage of Mark's outing to take a day off and go do "girlie" things. We wound up having a good time during our mental health day. A weekday away from the hospital is good for us and for Mark. Now that he can get himself to his appointments helps tremendously.
Hopefully, tomorrow and Sunday will be fun days and drier. It has been raining here a lot every day and last weekend we had to dodge a tremendous amount of water the whole weekend.