Visions

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I have been thinking about a conversation Josh and I had while we were leaving the Ice Arena the day of his doctor’s appointment. We had gone to the ice arena to meet up with Theresa, Kayla, and Elijah. While there, Josh’s doctor, Dr. Hammock, called Theresa to say that she was concerned about the symptoms she was seeing in Josh. They were making an appointment with Neurology but, if they couldn’t she wanted us to take Josh to the ER.

As we were leaving, Josh said that he was thinking about joining high school track. This sounded very encouraging to me. We have encouraged him to join a sport practically every year. At the same time, it was a bit disheartening because of the issue he was having with his knee, and I wasn’t sure how soon he would be able to run again. At that point, we couldn’t have guessed what the doctors at the ER were going to find in the CT scan, or that Josh would end up in the hospital.

Yesterday during physical therapy Josh was able to stand up out of his seat with the help of his physical therapist and the support of parallel bars. It was great being able to see him do that. He then practiced sitting down in his chair and then standing back up

He is getting stronger everyday. He has been able to help the nurses when they are repositioning him in his bed. He has also been practicing with a transfer board so hopefully he will soon be able to move out of his bed and into his wheelchair without the aid of the lift.

We were able to get out again. This time we spent some time inside the game room inside the unit. Josh played Minecraft on the Xbox for a few minutes. It was a challenge to work the controller, but he managed.

His friend Alex also visited after lunch and shared stories about his school trip to Costa Rica. Between the two of us, we managed to crack up Josh at least a dozen times. It is always great to hear Josh laugh, because that’s when he sounds more like his old self.

I talked to Josh last night about the progress he has been making. I told him that he should be proud of the fact that he was able to stand up out of the chair, and the progress he has been making overall. I also told him that it was important to remember that although he has a huge group of nurses, doctors, therapists working on him, that any gains that he makes will be all him. I told him that he needed to picture walking out of here on his own, and hold onto that as a vision, because that is something that he needed to remember especially when there are setbacks.

In my vision of the future, Josh will get better to the point where he can walk, communicate verbally, and do anything else that he sets his mind to.