Sometimes it doesn't matter how many times I write things down, my mind still doesn't catch up. I had written Stew's therapy appointment time down everywhere as 11AM. Somewhere in my mind, I thought it was at noon. Guess who was an hour late for the appointment? I realized this when I checked the time at 10 of 11. Damn it. I called and his therapist said noon was fine - the sigh of relief was huge.
Therapy was taxing today to say the least. She's really working to stretch out that skin and today she used ace bandages to bend his hands into fists which caused him a good deal of pain. It's hard to watch, but we both know that these things are necessary so that he will regain complete movement in his hands.
She put him on the torture device, where he does a series of exercises with hand mobility. They increase the tension as he gets stronger. His scores today were pretty good (I don't know the actual names of these tests except for one that he read off for me):
Steering wheel with the right hand - Better by 18%
Steering wheel with the left hand - Down by 1%
Door knob, right hand - +20%
Door knob, left hand - +3%
Left wrist flexion extension - didn't get the score
Right wrist flexion extension - +18%
Key, Right hand - +13%
Key, Left hand - +5%
The key turning is the hardest Stew says - he hates it. Mostly because it's at the end and fatigue is starting to set in and mostly because it just sucks.
On the way home from therapy, we're driving up 95 and Stew points to a bird and says, "Is that an eagle?" I look up - the bird has a white head and white under it's brown wings. It is in fact a bald eagle. I've never seen one around here before. I had to keep my cool or else I would have crashed the car. Those birds are my favorite and it was an awesome sight to see one just flying around near our house.
Stew's buddy Gene came down today to take him to dinner. They headed over the La Tolteca. Stew brought me back Tilapia. Yummers.
Gene and Stew spent a good portion of their time reminiscing about old times. I learned lots of things I didn't know before:
1. On the senior trip to Canada, Stew slept on the window sill - he says because it was cool and he was comfortable. This is a man who now can barely sleep anywhere besides his own pillow top extremely soft California King bed. A window sill - really?
2. On his one and only skiing trip he hurt his knee. Apparently the ski didn't pop off the way it should and he twisted it. No skiers in this family.
3. His desk at school was constantly being overturned by the teacher - once because during a test he had the text book open - ohhhhh, a cheat - and mostly because he never put things back in the right spot. Huh, some things never change.
4. Gene thanks Stew for saving him from dating a psycho in high school. Stew dated her instead.
5. Their class was the worst one that the teachers had ever seen. They caused several teachers to retire, one to take a sabbatical and they caused a senior trip to Canada in January because there was no way the school was taking them to Florida.
It was nice to meet Gene and hear about Stew as a little one from a friend's perspective. I need to meet up with Gene to see some of these high school pictures - especially the Miami Vice fashion show.
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