A Sunday in Rehab

Sunday marked the first visit from Aspen.  As you can imagine both Christian and Aspen were thrilled!  Aspen stayed for a couple of hours and obeyed all the rules nicely, which is no surprise, she's AMAZING!

Chris did two different stints in his wheelchair.  Gilbert (Chris's brother-in-law) even took him outside into the sun for some much needed natural vitamin E.

Another tough physical therapy session with more small improvements.  The therapists have to be careful during these sessions to monitor his blood pressure closely.  In a person without a spinal cord injury the leg muscles are always flexing, even while lying or sitting.  This pressurizes the veins in the lower extremities and helps the blood in those veins get back to the heart.  Since Christian isn't flexing his leg muscles at all, except when asked to and even then not with the ease and strength that he used to, the blood in his veins has a hard time getting back to his heart.  This causes low blood pressure (and clots in his legs).  Just something that has to be monitored.

Since we're all getting used to the new routine, sometimes things can slip through the cracks.  At one point nobody noticed that Chris's pain medication dose was an hour and a half overdue.  Christian, up until this point yesterday, had actually been keeping the nurses on schedule, reminding them about a half hour before a new dose is due, all day every day.  With all the stimulation yesterday, Christian didn't notice and neither did anyone else.  By the time Chris mentioned he was in some pain and got the dose, it took another hour or so for it to fully kick-in and Christian was in a LOT of pain.  Needless to say the roughest hour of the day for Chris.  A stern reminder of how injured Christian really is.  He remains in such good spirits that you can momentarily forget how bad things really are for him and how monumental the struggle of this journey will be.

Gilbert & Jenny had the 8:30pm to 2:30am shift and say Chris got several hours of good deep sleep.  Mike & Sheila took the next shift, 2:30am to 8:30am and Chris got several more good hours of sleep mixed in with some head massages, Christian's FAV right now.  The morning finished off with some out loud reading of IHC's spinal cord injury manual which put Chris right back to sleep :-).

With a few days under his belt on the 12th floor Chris has indicated he has some "favorite" nurses.  Last night produced two male nurses.  Everyone was able to have a good laugh at how Chris was having some SERIOUS male bonding time :-)!

He remains in good spirits and continues to benefit from the prayers and support offered on his behalf each day.