Busy!

I am sorry I have been so bad at updating this blog, I know it is really important to my dad to journal this experience and to share what he is going through and learning day by day. For now will give a quick update and tomorrow I will post pictures and videos and elaborate on the last week or so.

My dad is home! He came home last Thursday and home seems to be a healer. While he may still be in pain and mobility is difficult (we are all constantly shouting at him to be more careful) he loves being around family and his garden and having real life to keep his mind busy. Yesterday he had a new halo put on him at the hospital. Apparently the last one was set wrong and his neck wasn't healing. Luckily they caught it before to much damage was done and he is all fitted in a much sleeker looking halo model. We are currently trying to tailor some shirts he can wear to church and eventually to Brock's wedding in the temple. Life is great with him home. While he hasn't been back to church yet, after Taylor and Brock gave him teh sacrament on Sunday we held a little impromptu sacrament meeting. I lead the music, Dustin gave the lesson ( very willingly as he loves any chance to teach) and my dad shared his feelings of gratitude for all of his blessings. He spoke of the Atonement and how much more relevent it is to him and we discussed love and gratitude and how those feelings can bring reverence into our lives. My dad said that he has felt such a strong spirit over the last month and no matter how fast life might start to come at him, he doesn't want to loose the reverent feelings he has had.

I will fill in on more tomorrow...

Rookie

My dad spoke about how the word "rookie" has taken on a new meaning the other day and I thought I would communicate this to y'all. When he first arrived at the rehab facility he was talking up the nurses, smiling as he was wheeled or walked down the hallway, ready to revolutionize the attitude of the other seemingly down-trodden patients. He talked of how he wanted to return to the rehab center once he was released to be a volunteer to lift the patients spirits. He told us stories to cheer us and played the part of the happy patient for all of his visitors.
Well now the word "rookie" has come to mean something new to him. He now realizes that the patients he thought he would some day cheer were really looking at him and shaking thier heads thinking rookie. The smile he thought he would wear as a pemanent ficture started to turn upside down more often and the challenges and the day-today of the facility started to wear him down. He had been a rookie all right, unaware of the validity of the feelings of the other less-than-always-optomistic patients.
It is not that he is now depressed or unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but now he is more realistic and taking things a day at a time. He is dealing with the reality of his feelings and growing from them rather than masking them. And I know he is now part of the group that shakes their head at the new guy and thinks "rookie!"

(my dad said all of this is a joking manner but it is hard to add that tone in writing: the point is that you never know until you've been there)

My Kathy Blanket, by Will Nowell

The story that I wanted to tell about mommy today is that, today I went into my MRI and I had a neat opportunity. Ever since Mom and I have been married, she has been a little dissapointed that she married someone that doesn't sleep in past 5 or 6 in the morning. Its been a source of lots of dissagreements between mom and I that she is always asking why I have to get up early, and why I won't sleep in with her. But a little while ago, maybe a couple years ago she discovered the secret weapon. She hugs me, puts her arms around me and knows that she can immediatly calm me down. ANd if she hugs me for long enough I fall right back asleep and forget about getting up, so I've always called her "My Little Kathy Blanket". For a long time now, the past few years, when I am restless or in the morning, sometimes I'll just say, " I need my little Kathy Blanket" and she'll hug me, and it will immediatley calm my spirit. So, while I've been in the hospital, several times before I go to sleep mom has given me little hugs before I go to sleep and helps me calm down. Sometimes I can talk her into laying down with me in this little itty bitty hospital bed. When she does that I immediatly calm down and even though my arm is completely squished, I absolutly love having her with me. Alot of times I'll just fall asleep. So today while I was in the MRI machine and because my Halo is so big they didn't have a way of getting me into the MRI machine without squishing me really badly and my arms were on top of my Halo and it was squishing me pretty badly and it was real uncomortable. Then they put you in this little MRI machine, and they tell you that you have to be in there and the top of it is only about an inch from your nose. So my heart was beating really fast and I was breathing really hard and I was really uncomfortable. So I started to imagine that the reason my arm was uncomfortable was because I had Kathy there with me . I started to pretend that I had my little Kathy blanket there with me, and I stopped breathing hard and I calmed down, and I almost fell asleep while I was in hte MRI machine even though it sounds like a jack hammer is going off the whole time. Because I was able to imagine her laying next to me and it calmed me down. So I really love my little Kathy blanket and I want her to know that. (transcribed by EmyLee McIntyre)