The Rebuilding Of A Man

Today marks the forty-fourth day of this surreal journey of ours. Into the seventh week now of an unimaginable life. A life where you have not one iota of control over any aspect of your existence...not even the breaths you take.

Let me back-peddle a bit. That lack of control lasted just the first two and a half weeks of the journey. After a time, there came a control shift. Sometimes the shift was so slight as to be unrecognizable. Other times the shift was gigantic. Such was the case post trache, when the breathing came naturally, without the aid of machines. That was a huge change in the control dynamic. As the shift turned more and more in our favor, the mind, soul and the light of the man returned home to his body.

There are no connections to any machines now. No staples remain from surgeries. There are no restrictions on diet and the medicines are mostly to maintain health, not to heal. The exception is a pain medicine that is used right before physical and occupational therapy to help with the horrendous pain that accompanies those disciplines.

Rodney is now in an inpatient rehab hospital. He is receiving much needed therapy to get his ravaged limbs moving and functioning again. He has been here one full week and the change is as phenomenal as his recovery has been all along. The legs work just fine and he walks around much as a normal person does, and his balance is unaffected.

The problem remains the arms or more precisely, the elbow and shoulder joints. The shoulders are waking up a bit and starting to become loose. The elbows are excruciatingly painful to range and that is where the focus of the therapy is. It was explained to me that the muscles, ligaments and such have to be ripped in order to stretch out as much as they need to be. That, in a addition to trapped nerves make it truly painful to bend the elbows. He takes the therapy well, and is making progress. He is recently able to hold a cup and drink from the straw. He has touched the top of his head and his face. He can now operate the nurse call button and turn his tv on and off. He works on dexterity and stretching in the gym and also on his own in his room after therapy has finished. He is very motivated to recover his life.

So much weight loss, so much muscle deterioration....sometimes I wonder how he even holds himself up. He is gaining strength daily and we pour the food to him, as much as he wants. He expends an enormous amount of energy in therapy, and so far hasn't gained even one pound LOL. The smile in the picture here is more a grimace than a smile, but is dear to my heart and very special to me. It represents progress!

The prognosis is good. The patient advocate says that two more weeks at most are needed for inpatient therapy, then a stretch of outpatient visits will be in order. We should get to go home in TWO weeks!!!

It has been grueling, devastating, heart wrenching and at times sad beyond measure. At the same time it has been uplifting, joyous, spiritual and enlightening. What a roller coaster ride it's been.

In talking with the surgeons, doctors, nurses and therapists, the consensus is that he shouldn't even be alive. Less than 10% of people recover from the injuries he sustained and to have come as far as he has and be in as good of shape as he is, is a miracle and a blessing. Apparently, he has an unfulfilled purpose that needs taken care of.

This is part of an update I gave on Rodney's FB page and it also applies to many people here:

All in all, he is a phenomenon...a person who by rights shouldn't even be here, according to every doctor who attends him. What has brought him this far with relatively little permanent damage is the concerted efforts of all of his friends and families, constantly lifting him up to receive healing even greater than that provided by the medical field. I say again, how eternally grateful we are to have you all along on this journey <3 Words cannot express my gratitude!!

I thank you all, my friends.....Thank You <3