Update #119 from Linda

Hello! Thanks for checking in!

I'm busy counting the days until I can stay home this summer and get some things in place for Steve. I have plans to get his old bedroom organized so that we can do some therapy-type things before even coming downstairs to start our day. My hope is to move the recumbent bike up there, and get a table and chair or two. When we win the insurance battle over the mat table, that will go in there as well!

The "Steve things" that we're most excited about right now are his talking and his walking. That's a little ironic, since a year ago we were told by some therapy people that we needed to face the fact that he might never walk any better than he did or talk any better than he did at that time. HAH! We have some videos that we're going to shorten a bit and include with this post. His appearance is a little distorted in the walking one, because of the way it was filmed...he's not quite as wide as he looks! You'll see that Steve's speech is soft and slow. It's not that he doesn't know what he wants to say, it's just that it's so hard to get it out. Not too long ago it could take him 45-60 seconds to respond to questions asked by his speech therapist. Now his response time is so much faster! That's the part that everyone is excited about. As far as walking goes, he has been using a new walker called a Rifton walker and has been very successful with it the last two times he used it. This past Friday he walked 1400 feet in 30 minutes with very little support. That's huge!

Swimming is over for the year (since he swims at a school) so we are looking into alternatives. So far the YMCA looks like the best choice. No hot tub, but a warm therapeutic pool! We tried an underwater treadmill a few weeks ago at another place, but it was a lot of driving and a lot of work for such a short time in the water.

Steve was on his computer last night and did a better job on it than I think he ever has. At one point he looked up and asked me if I had a spare $49,996 since he had found a truck on E-Bay! There is a vision connection to computer use (and other things) that we have just not figured out, but are working on all the time. There are a couple stores that deal with vision aids, and I told him we'd make getting to them a priority once I'm out of school...big thumbs up from Steve!

The other night we pushed the coffee table next to the couch and dragged an old mattress up from the basement and put it on top. Steve could lay on that and stretch out and watch t.v. Such a simple thing, but it works! It also gives us a place to do some stretching for him.

He continues to ride on Saturdays. Loves the horses and the people there, to say nothing of the physical benefits to him. That is a long car ride (over an hour each way) and takes up most of our day, but is so worth it!

Plans are rolling along for the golf outing, thanks to the amazing people who are working on it! Please pray for nice weather on the 26th! If you'd like to play golf and need info, you can email me at lindapercha@gmail.com. If you don't want to play but would like to stop by on that day, please feel free! We always have such a nice time and would love to see you.

We hope life is good for all of you. Thanks so much for continuing to care about and support Steve and the rest of us during this journey. It means more than you can imagine.

Love, Linda