Saturday June 20th

My third Saturday here, for I got here on a Saturday in case anyone didn’t know that. The weekends are nice for I don’t have any appointments or few appointments that don’t start until 11 like this Saturday. All I have planned is an exercise group, and a PT session. It actually turned out the PT I was going to work with went home with food poisoning from the food here at RIC, so a different PT came into my room and said she rearranged her schedule from 12 to 12:30 if I would like. I thought that was really nice of her to go out of her way to make sure I still got a session because my other PT was sick. That morning before we started any of our session, Mark Lee, Bob Schmelzer, Andy Houlihan and Kalli all were hanging out in my room visiting with me. We had some fun joking around then I really wanted to get out of bed. I pushed my call button and after 20 minutes no one was coming. Finally I pushed the button again and the lady said “can I help you?” and I responded “both of my legs fell out of the bed. Can you please send someone to come help me?” Five seconds later we hear an announcement “730 bed 1, both his legs fell out of bed. Someone please assist him” About a minute later my nurse Angel walks in. I said “Yeah, my legs didn’t fall out of bed, but I really want to get out of bed so I’m not late for my class.” She gave me a funny look and said she’d go get my PCT (personal care techniction). My PCT came we got changed and went to class. So at 11 we started our exercise program. Mark and Andy decided to join in. I told them before we started that no one has been able to keep up and do the whole exercise program with me. So we all sat down and started the exercise program which is usually kind of a hoot between making fun of the music, and making goofy exercise moves it can be a lot of fun. So we rocked out the whole first half of the arm movement session and then we took a little break and get weights put on our hands, take a pressure break, and get some fluids. Then after the break, oh my goodness, Mark and Andy were nowhere to be found. I guess the first half really tuckered them out (author’s note, Mark here, and it really was pretty tough and Houli and I really didn’t want to have anything to do with weights after the first 30 min). and they couldn’t handle it like some of the fine tuned participants such as Mr. Crocket, a 70 year old, hunched over African American man, who’s hunched over worse than the hunch back of Notre Dame. Mr. Crocket is a great new addition to the exercise group for he just started this week. He’s got a great attitude and is pretty funny.

We finished out the second half, weight portion of the session which went really well. I forgot to mention that there was another new addition this other guy, probably about 45 years old who’s got a white ninja turtle shell on, he seems alright too.

So then I met up with the PT that offered to do a session with me because mine had been cancelled. We went in the gym and I transferred virtually all by myself from my chair to the mat. She wanted to work on strengthening my core so I sat on the edge of the mat balancing on my own and she did several different drills where I go down on my elbow and balance on my side and then the other side, then we did another drill where we take a ball on my side, a red ball about 10 in diameter where I roll it around my back and grab it on the other side. We did this several times; it seems like an easy enough task to roll a ball around your back from one arm to the other but boy it took a lot of concentration and balance for I couldn’t put weight on the ball because it would roll away. Then she did some of the drills where she would push me around while sitting on the mat to try and throw me off balance. I, of course, gave her a good push back just for fun. The session went well and I did another transfer virtually all on my own which really feels good; my transfers are going really well with a slide board into the chair.

After that we came into the Canary room to have some lunch. Joining me was newly arrived sister Theresa, Laura, Pat Keegan and my dad. My sister Theresa got me a t-shirt that said ‘bomb squad if you see me running, you might want to try and keep up’. I said to her “is this some sort of sick joke, because I can’t run?” We all had a good laugh, it’s a cool shirt.

After lunch we went outside to throw around the bean bag and get some fresh air, probably around 80 degrees and sunny. We had a good group throwing the bag around; Kalli, Mark, Andy, Pat and I were all getting in some tosses while Pat finished off some of Mark and Houli’s ultra meaty pizza from Gino’s. Probably the thickest and meatiest pizza I’ve ever seen. Thanks for the suggestion Gina.

After that we headed to the apartment to meet up with my mom and dad, and the whole gang for a nice dinner. My mom asked me what I wanted and I requested pork tacos with her special salsa combination sauce. We had dinner played, cards, and then I needed to head back to start my nightly routine.

In case any of your are wondering for I had mentioned I didn’t poop in four days, on Friday night the thunder from down under finally came. Those poor poor nurses that were on staff that night took really great care of me cleaning up what had to have been four pounds of poop. On that note, that will be the end of the blog today. Hope you all have a great weekend. Remember to wish your dads a happy father’s day.