Tuesday, August 16, 2011

In Which Connor Sleeps In And We Acknowledge A Weird Anniversary

So today Connor slept in until almost two in the afternoon, which was kind of crazy.  I think this must have been one of his "catching up on sleep" days.  So we spent pretty much the whole day at the house.  I intended to try and get caught up on all of the housework that I've neglected while Connor hasn't been feeling well, but instead I mostly napped.  I kind of need to catch up on sleep too!

Otherwise I mostly spent the day making phone calls, setting up appointments, and making sure Connor has all of his paperwork for school ready.  Before I had Connor, I had absolutely no idea just how much time this sort of thing would take up-- updating his emergency files, keeping up with insurance referrals and making sure his prescriptions stay up to date is a full time job in itself.  I'm glad that I'm able to stay home and manage Connor's care; I think it would be pretty difficult to try and juggle working and taking care of the little guy, though I know a lot of families do it.

In other news, I was so frazzled by all the craziness going on last week that Jer and I completely forgot that August 11th was the two year anniversary of him getting blown up.  It's not like we celebrate the day or anything (think they make a Hallmark card for that-- Congratulations On Your Near-Death Experience or some such?) but I do think it's important to acknowledge it as a life-changing event.  Jeremy is doing extraordinarily well, I'm happy to say, and after a lot of hard work he's improved far beyond the doctors' prediction of what kind of function he might be likely to end up with.  Though he still walks with a noticeable limp, has difficulty on uneven terrain and after a busy day on his feet ends up with quite a bit of pain, he is able to do pretty much anything he sets his mind to-- even running, though he doesn't do that very often as it's not great for his feet.  He uses weightlifting to keep his body in tip-top shape so that his leg muscles are as strong as possible and he's not carrying around a lot of dead weight, so to speak, that would put more pressure on his feet.  This means that right now he looks a whole heck of a lot like a blue-eyed Vin Diesel. 

I don't really mind.  At all.

So the recovery process for him is over-- he's probably not going to continue to improve much after this, and his functionality is probably at its peak right now.  But hopefully a decade or two down the line technology and medical science will have improved enough that he'll have some good options when it comes to looking at replacement parts.

Maybe he can have robot feet. 

~Jess

4 comments:

Marc said...

OK so if you don't want to or can't don't even bother posting, but how's Jer's military career going? I ask because the Canadians would have already been trying to throw him out for 18 months now and want to compare.

Jess said...

It's fine! He's still active duty and has no problems there. He's considering a variety of options as far as what direction he wants to take his future career-- perhaps into a medical field-- but he plans to stay in until retirement and it doesn't look like there will be any issues with that. Currently he works as cadre for a unit that oversees the recovery of wounded soldiers.

The US army is recognizing that wounded soldiers still have extremely valuable contributions to make to the military, and are allowing more and more disabled soldiers to stay in and continue their military careers. Soldiers with much more severe injuries than Jer continue to serve. Here are a few relevant articles:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/21/blind-soldiers-still-serv_n_585038.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360263/Captain-D-J-Skelton-Americas-injured-soldier-return-line-thanks-warrior-spirit.html

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/science_tech/better,-stronger,-faster-%E2%80%93-bionic-men-and-women-returning-to-the-battlefield

Julia O'C said...

Robot feet. Emmett would fall to pieces with excitement.

*Tasha* said...

Happy *very belated* birthday! And congratulations to Jer!! :) (Not on getting blown up, of course, but on his subsequent recovery & hard work)

Robot feet... hmmm, I have one bionic ear, so I think bionics are pretty awesome ;] 'course, with MY bionic ear, I only run the risk of potentially picking up radio signals, whereas Jer's feet might become self-aware & take him somewhere he doesn't expect. Hahaha! Just kidding... this reminds me of Caprica though, have you ever seen the show? It's based on Battlestar Gattaca, which I actually never saw, but I adore Caprica.

I hope Connor's seizure cycle stops soon. :(

 
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