Monday July 13th

I woke up in the morning after a rough night and struggled a bit with blood pressure, slight stomach ache and just overall ache body. I was able to eat a little bit of breakfast, get out of bed into my chair and get to hand group about ten minutes late. During hand group I worked with some putty, pulling beans and little pegs out of it. This is a great workout for my hands. Two new people were in the hand group; a girl named Sarah and a guy named Matt. Both are right around my age. We all chatted and continued to work on our separate hand group activities.

After hand group I got together with Katie, a fairly new OT. She is filling in for Diane while Diane is on vacation in Wyoming with her sisters. Katie and I hooked up the e-stim machine to work no getting hand extensors which are the muscles that stretch your hand our flat, pulling the fingers back. Usually, we work on pulling the fingers into a fist; totally different muscles. The hand extensors are a much weaker muscle and it is difficult to find them. It feels a bit different. We targeted different areas and were able to get some good reaction. After working on each hand, one at a time, back and forth, we left about 20 minutes of our hour long session to go over in the gym and strengthen my wrist muscles. Once we got in the gym we strapped on some weights and I did several sets of strengthening exercises. After that Katie searched in large cabinets in the gym filled with different types of tools and devices to help with all kinds of functions different people struggle with. Katie found two different tools that would help me start doing my bowel program on my own. We threw them in my backpack for later practice and use.

I headed out to the middle area by the reception desk for some hard-core exercise group with Kate as our leader. After going to town, sweating my butt off and again using 4lb weights in the second half I really got a great workout. This was good because I wasn't really feeling very good the first half of the day and a good exercise like that always helps me get back on my feet. Kind of a funny phrase to say now - get back on my feet - since there isn't much walking going on as of late.

After exercise group my mom, Kalli and I ate lunch in the canary room and then went to take a leak. After I was done cathing Kalli came in to my bedroom and Maurice and his wife Abby and I all gave Kalli her birthday presents. Maurice and Abby got Kalli some world famous Chicago cheese and caramel popcorn which is unbelievably good along with another bag of chocolate covered mixed with caramel popcorn. I also presented the second half of her present which was some nice pieces from Victoria Secret which she had been needing since most of her clothes are still stuck in California.

We sampled some of the wonderful popcorn and chatted for a while. Then, I headed back out to the center area where I looked for Dr. Wanda Grant Knight for a while. We had a 2:00 appointment, but with no luck finding her, I decided to go hit the weights. After pumping some iron for a while, I met up with Carey for our 3:00 PT session. One of the important things that I need to work on is making sure I can do a good car transfer. So, her and I headed up to the 12th floor to practice. I lined myself up to the 92 dodge spirit with a beautiful silver paint job which has been used and abused by all the apparently drunken wheelchair drivers lining up to practice. I had the best in and then out transfer that I have ever had, doing everything completely on my own. Doing it on my own is truthfully not even necessary, for if I am transferring into someone's car they are definitely going to be there to lift a leg or pull a butt cheek if needed.

After the very successful transfer I felt good and as if I had really accomplished that portion of my checklist for going home. After PT I headed back to bed to lay down and take a quick nap before we went out to dinner for Kalli's birthday. Once I refreshed myself a bit Kalli, my mom and I headed to a nice tapas restaurant nearby called Emilio's. The restaurant had indoor and outdoor seating both wheelchair accessible. We decided to sit inside because the tables were larger and easier for me to tuck underneath and get close to the table. Strangely as it seems, getting underneath restaurant tables is one of the more difficult things for a lot of restaurants have a table leg set up that just doesn't work well for a wheelchair. We picked a handful of different tapas plates and each got a different flavor of sangria to sip on. Enjoying some nice bread and wonderful butter, the plates began to come and we slowly enjoyed sharing each of the very interesting combos we had chosen. We cleaned just about every plate and then shared a piece of flan for dessert. The dinner was very enjoyable. We paid our bill and headed home.

My mom headed back to the apartment and Kalli and I went to RIC to start my nightly routine. Another unfortunately fairly difficult day from the start but again, I learned that the only way to pull yourself out is by forcing yourself out of bed and getting your blood flowing with either some exercise or activity of some sort.