Daily life:
Up about 8:00 - 8:30 for breakfast, pills.
9:00 - 11/12 Hired help.
1) exercises my legs to keep them healthy.
2) assists me getting on the portable potty for any where between 30 to 60 minutes.
3) twice a week helps be get on to a bench on the tub for a bath.
4) helps me get dressed, pants shoes, etc.
5) helps me get into my wheelchair for the day. I use what is called a sliding board to get from the bed to the chair.
12:00 - lunch
afternoons: once or twice a week Barb takes me in our wheel chair accessible Van to the hospital for physical therapy - a rather rigorous work out to strengthen my upper body.
I nap almost every day and people stop by to visit.
See my family a lot. Christy and Greg, Suzanne and Jamie and their two kids and Tim who works two weeks on and two weeks off on a boat. He expects to get his Captain's license any day. Had a big gathering at Suzanne's on Thanksgiving day.
I was one of three speakers at Church a week ago on a thanksgiving theme. Following is what I said:
About the third week I was in the hospital, I received a phone call from an old friend. I was too tired to talk to him so he talked to my wife. He asked her "How is his faith". When Barbara told me this is made me mad as I took it as a kind of insult. What is the world was he asking or implying? Was he curious to know if my injury has caused me to disbelieve in God? Or was he asking if my injury had caused me to disbelieve in the goodness of God or was he asking if my injury as caused be to disbelieve in the promises of Christ. This is silly. My faith and I hope your faith is founded on historic facts related to the life and death of Christ and his promises, primarily his promise that he will never leave us or forsake us.
There is a minister in New England by the name of Robert Farrar Capon who wrote a book called Hunting the Divine Foxin which he relates the following story:
A man was traveling late at night in the middle of winter over a mountain pass when his car quits running. He gets out of the car and opens the hood and sees no obvious problem. As there was no traffic he begins to fear that he may freeze to death when he sees a light coming up the hill. He begins to have hope but then sees that it is not two lights like a car would have but only one light. As the light gets closer he senses that that light comes from a figure and he begins to think that it is Christ. And then realizes that in fact it is Jesus and he is excited. What does Jesus do? He takes the man by the hand and they go and sit in a snow bank while the man freezes to death.
I then asked the congregation to repeat with me three times the promise "I will never leave you or forsake you".
How are we doing? Better but it is not easy.We are gaining hope that we can get our life back.
My over riding emotions are fatigue and frustrations. Living in a wheel chair is more difficult than I imagined but it is getting better. I attend a group that is all wheel chair people. They say it takes about two years to get fully adjusted and I believe it. I still have trouble believing that this has happened.
More blogging later today.
Off to physical therapy
Don
