Seth-n-Jode's Adventures

Seth got his first shower in over three weeks today!  He said it was one of the most satisfying showers that he has ever experienced!  Just having water splash over him.

He can now be at 90 degree upright sitting.  So they are using this lift contraption to move him from bed to chair (either a regular reclining type chair or a commode chair).  He likes the chair but he says it makes his butt sore.  And its no wonder.  He barely had a butt to begin with and they just weighed him and he is down to 124.4 pounds (down from his normal weight of 145).  And he is eating everything they give him.  They have just said that his body is consuming lots of those calories to heal the bones.  We are pushing food down him every opportunity that he accepts it.  But he still looks pretty much like a living skeleton.  Got to get some meat back on that boy's bones!

The physical therapist came in and did range of motion on both his legs.  He said he is going to order some sort of device that moves Seth's right leg constantly and slowly to make sure it doesn't lose any range of motion.

The doc came in and said Seth is really improving.  He estimated his mental capacity at about 90% of normal and that he thought the neurological rehab will bring him back 100%.  The Craig Rehab admissions folks came in and are looking to get him a spot hopefully even next week.  They said he has advanced so fast neurologically and he needs to get into neurological acute rehab as soon as possible.

So depending on how it all plays out, Seth may get his neurological rehab and then they will let us come home.  And then he either comes back to Denver, once he's weight bearing on his legs, for his orthopedic rehab, or we'll do his orthopedic rehab in Durango.  A lot depends on this orthopedic appointment Seth's got on Monday.  If we come home, I'll be temporarily revamping the main level of the house to accomodate him while he's still not weight bearing on either leg (which will still be a month or maybe two out by the time we come home).  We have a four level house that isn't very handicap friendly.  In fact, anything but.  However, I figure I'll take over our main level which has the kitchen, dining and sitting area.  We'll make that into our campspot.  I'll put up a bedside commode (since we have no bathroom on the main level).  And I'll shower him out on the deck.  It will be the  Molas campsite extraordinaire!  Anybody want to come for a sleepover??? :)

The picture today has a funny story behind it.  We were in South America back in 2000 on our 6 month walkabout.  I had convinced Seth that we needed to go kayak the "most remote stretch of whitewater" in the Ecuador Amazon basin on the Coca River.  He reluctantly agreed since he knows that any trip with such superlatives usually means some sort of agony will occur somewhere along the way.  It took us two days to get there by bus.  We were stopped half a day by a landslide.  We finally got to the town where we started our walk to the actual put in for the river.  We hired a horseman to take our kayaks in for a few miles until it got too steep.  Finally the horses had to turn back and Seth and I continued.  We roped our kayaks down this very steep jungly pitch which took a few hours with lots of slipping and near misses of losing the kayaks altogether.  Finally, just as dusk fell on our third day to this river, we reached water. 

It was this beautiful stretch of river.  As remote as I've ever seen.  Huge waterfalls coming in from the sides of the jungles.  One night we were making camp and this family just appeared out of the bush.  They had these big machetes and were carrying these big green leaves they had just cut.  They had seen us coming down the river and had cut us a bed to lay on for the night.  They were so nice.  We could communicate with them a little although their primary language was Quechua and they knew very little Spanish. Mostly we communicated via hand signs.  We gave them some of the supplies we were carrying (duct tape, extra tuna, and some rope) and they really seemed to appreciate that. 

Did I mention the bugs?  They were swarming everywhere.  These little gnat like creatures that nearly drove us crazy.  We had taken malaria medicine so we weren't worried about that but the bugs were nearly eating us alive.  Needless to say, we had bug bites all over when we finally reached the take out.  We hitched into this town and were just dying for a hot shower to wash off all the grit, sand, dirt and bugbites of the past seven days.  So we found the best place in town which was a ghastly $4.00 per night but advertised nice hot showers.  (We were used to paying $2.00 per night!)  Anway, Seth jumped right into the shower and here's what he got.  Not too satisfying!  Certainly nothing like today's shower was!