Wednesday, June 30, 2010

New Beginnings

It has been 6 days since my last blog and it might as well have been 60 days! So much has happened in this last week!

First off I want to send a special thank you to our Pastor Andy, his wife Hope and the entire congregation at Grace Community Church and Troy's boss Brian and the guys at the shop for all their generosity, prayers, time donated, and for cooking meals to help me and my family through this entire transition of me being displaced from my girls for 2 months and the process of moving. I couldn't have gotten packed up and loaded into the truck without everyone's help that chipped in! And even if you weren't there yesterday, I know you had us in your prayers and that is great too! God has been so good to us and He has really blessed me by surrounding me with wonderful people that love our family. Troy will be so happy and I know he is more than grateful that his family is being taken care of and watched over while he himself can't do so, right now.

With that said, I also want to recognize our neighbors at Harmony, especially Ron and Monica, my family, my mom and siblings and friends that have been by my side, either in person or in prayer keeping me encouraged and focused on the positive. I am definitely blessed having each and every one of you in our lives!

This last week was just filled with blessings after blessings coming at me from every direction! I was even surprised last night with a check from someone that was enough to cover 1 months of rent! I am just overwhelmed by everyone that has been there for my family helping us get through this!

I ended up leaving last night (against the advice of many to stay and wait until this morning to leave...LOL) and arrived to the hotel in McDonough, which is not too far from the house, at 5:30 this morning. The girls did great and slept pretty much the whole way. We checked in, showered, went back downstairs for breakfast, slept for a about four hours and went to see Troy at the hospital. We arrived there to find him in the gym doing his physical therapy. We got there at the back end of it so they were finishing up with him. The therapist sat him on the edge of the mat and he opened his eyes huge when he saw Tyra! He then glanced up at me and looked over at Brianna! It was really obvious he knew we were there. The excitement showed in his face! It was awesome! She also advised us that they had him walking with complete assistance, but he was the one pushing with his legs as if trying to walk by himself. I was sad that I missed it, but this will now become a regular practice for him during his therapy sessions so I hope to get a glimpse of watching him do that real soon!

Once he was done with the therapy the therapist showed us how he is not needing the use of the Hoyer lift to be put in and out of his wheelchair. She grabbed him by his waste, pulled him up and he pushed up with his legs and stood up! She then turned him and he grabbed on to the arm on the chair and sat down with the help of the therapist easing him into the chair. It is just so incredible how he is doing all these things and still considered to be in a coma! The brain is a marvelous organ! Praise God for all that he's done with Troy so far.

He also went from a 13 on the JFK coma scale to a 15 out of 23 possible points. He started reaching out for objects this week while I was gone, too so that increased his score 2 points.

He is still not urinating on his own so he needs to have an IC done every 6 hours, but the nurse mentioned today that if this continues they will have to give him meds to help him empty his bladder.

Anyhow, today was a wonderful day filled with all sorts of new things and tricks Troy has started to do! I asked the therapist about him being discharged on July 8th and it now looks like they will extend his time once again! This time they are considering putting into the rehab program where he is the one participating in rehab, not the rehab being done to him. If that is the case, his time at the hospital will be extended to a minimum of 6 weeks and will be reassessed every two weeks again from that point depending on his recovery. The next step after this will be the bridge program, where he'll go home with us at night and he'll have to be at the hospital during the day. That is where us living here in GA is really going to come in handy. It will be awesome having him in his own environment at night and still have the support of the hospital to help with the duties of caring for him during the day!

Things are happening really fast now and I'm beyond excited! God is so good and His timing continues to be perfect! Prayers are being answered! Praise God!

6 comments:

  1. Wonderful! Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!!!

    Love,
    Katrina

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  2. Amazing news, Joan!!!

    Heather

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  3. What WONDERFUL news, Joan!!! So incredibly sorry that we didn't make it out on Tuesday night.....I'm afraid I wouldn't have been much help anyway with my little girls running around trying to crawl in all the boxes. :) Sounds like you had a GREAT team to get everything into the truck. That must have been an awesome feeling to see his face when he recognized you all and saw that you were there. PRAISE GOD!!! We will pray that the transition will go smoothly and that God will surround you with people to support you and hold you up even in a new place.

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  4. Joan,
    This is awesome news to hear!!! I broke down in tears the other night after i realized that you all were truly gone. I miss you all so much!!!!! I wish i could wake up and make it all go away. Please know that you all are in our constant prayers. We will see you again...even sooner than you know. Don't worry about a guest room, we have our air mattress. LOL.

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  5. blessings from God... love cousin sheila

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  6. Joan, you are an amazing woman! I am so inspired by your strength and your faith. & with all that you're doing you still take out the time to keep us all updated on Troy's progress, which is awesome. Thank you so much for all that you have done for him and everyone that loves his so much.

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