April 11, 2006

Dear Family and Friends,

I wanted to take a few minutes tonight and catch up on the blog. The days go by so quickly here that I don't write as often as I would like to.

Since writing last week, I've been practicing what I've learned at Craig in the outside world. On Friday, Craig had a field trip to Colorado Mills Mall. I spent the day with Heather, my PT, and my buddy and next door neighbor, Ben. We had a great day terrorizing Heather with our wheel chair antics. I also had one of my favorites, Panda Express, and bought some new shorts.

On Saturday, Mom picked me up and we went to the Parker Rec Center to watch our eight year old next door neighbor, Cole, play baseball and to watch Callum play soccer. It was a beautiful day, over 70 degrees. We then met for lunch at Costa Vida and I got a buzzed haircut. It's pretty short! Kaitlyn and I went to Park Meadows Mall with Mom. I like the mall because it's easy to navigate. I also spent time at Whitney and Justin's house while they worked in the yard putting in a drainage system. I love to be with their little and very busy family!

On Sunday, I was able to stay all three hours at church. I've been making phone calls to the families in our ward to let them know we have "Finding Faith in Christ" DVD's and invitations for them to invite their friends and neighbors to church on Easter Sunday.

Amanda ordered my power chair today, a Quickie S646SE. I have tried out four or five different chairs but have decided on my first chair, the Quickie. We are continuing to evaluate manual chairs and seat cushions.

Today I also went to "fit" class where we do a lot of strengthening exercises. Craig is starting a new fit class for quads whose injuries are from C4 to C8 that I'm excited to participate in.

Sue, one of driver's training instructors, worked with me today to check my range of motion for my arms and strength in my arms and hands. She feels like I have enough strength to operate the hand devices for the brakes and gas. I sat in the driver's seat of a Dodge Caravan to get the feel for driving with the hand controls. I'll continue to take driver's training classes until I leave Craig.

Over the past couple of weeks, a missionary from our stake has been spending time with me. His name is Chad King and he had only been on his mission to California for a few weeks when he re-injured his shoulder and arm giving a woman who fell off a wall CPR. He will be in Denver until he is rehabilitated and can return to his mission. I've enjoyed having him come to Craig.

In the last blog, Mom talked about an exercise induced therapy program we are looking at in Salt Lake City. You can look at it on the web at www.neuroworx.org There is also another blogsite written by a patient who has been to Sit Tall, Stand Tall and Neuroworx. You can access it at www.kevinjmullin.com. Kevin's site is very informative and Dad had a good phone call with Kevin earlier today.

Last week, I went to see the surgeon who did my surgery immediately following my accident. He looked at the x-rays and felt like the stabilization surgery fusing C5, C6 and C7 was successful. There is some concern because there is more movement above C5 that could eventually cause me arm pain and require additional surgery. I'm scheduled to see Dr. Markey for a follow-up visit the day before I'm supposed to leave Craig.

Susan Zmolek emailed the following a couple of weeks ago. Thank you Susie!

Marty couldn't stop talking about Ryan's excellent talk in Church today. I missed it, and I could kick myself! Have a great week!

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

-- "Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself."

both from -The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

My love to all of you, Ryan