September 17th from Omaha

Hi Friends,

Tomorrow morning at 9:15 am, we will have been gone from Swedish Medical Center for one whole week. I have not written much on our progress here at home, as our days have been full with visits from family and friends. I can tell you that Rachel and Leah continue to make progress in their journey back to health. Leah’s great news is that she got to be free from her casts, free from having to cover casts in showers, free from the nagging weight and freedom to stand. She and Jay shared their wealth of two shower chairs, letting Rachel borrow one so Rachel could enjoy a shower also. The drawback to loosing the casts (if you can call it a drawback) is that Leah now has to start Physical Therapy on her shoulder in an intense sort of way.

Rachel had a mostly uneventful medical week until today. We met with her personal physician on September 12, and they made arrangements for meetings with a wound care group and an orthopedic doctor for today. Subsequently, our day began at 8:30 with a trip to the orthopedic office, some more x-rays, more probing and prodding, instructions to make more appointments, then off to the Physical Therapist office to make an appointment to get that started. We ended the day at 4:45 arriving home from our last medical appointment of the day. Tomorrow we start all over at 8:45 with a visit to an ankle specialist in orthopedics. We end the day with a couple hours of investigative PT to determine the course of action Rachel will begin with her next PT appointment.

We were able to fit in a couple of short walks up the hill and around the corners of our street, and we made a three mile walk out at Wehrspann Lake, with Rachel walking almost 1/3 of the time. The rest was left up to her man-servant to transport her over. For fun, we did find a Nashville Warbler in the trees searching for insect protein and energy for continuation of his trip south.

We are also enjoying Rachel’s flowers, the hummingbirds at the feeder, and a Red-breasted Nuthatch that showed up at the seed feeder. And, our neighbors have developed this practice of feeding us. First they mowed the lawn, trimmed the bushes, and kept the thieves at bay. Now they bring us hot food. Its tough to complain when you have your mouth full too!

Jay, Renee, Britanie, Zach and Leah’s Dad