James came home for the weekend for the first time in 7 months last weekend!  He enjoyed himself greatly!  He wanted me to take pictures of him with all the pets so he could show them to the hospital staff.  We got pictures of him with some of the pets and then I just started taking pictures without James in them!  He also went to church for the first time since his accident.  He did very well and enjoyed seeing everone again! 

He is doing great in his therapies.  He is walking with just one person assist using the wall rails in the hallway.  His balance and his core strength are starting to really return.  He is taking a writing class and loving it.  His printing is getting quite legible.  He is starting to really text and use his facebook messaging without assistance and a few people have recieved messages from him.  He is doing well at his speech and language therapies,  progress there is slow,  but it is progress!  He is starting to dress himself.  He is able to get his shirt on and off himself and needs just a bit of assistance with pants.

We are heading home again this weekend and looking foreward to a long weekend!  The plan is to go home for the weekend every week now!

We bumped into the neuro surgeon who did James' surgery today!  It was really cool because he recognized us right away,  and was very pleasently surprized!  He may come up to visit James tomorrow morning!  He said that he might make it for physio tomorrow! After the surgery he really didnt think that James would wake up and told us that he would be paralyzed on his right side,  so I am super pleased that James was able to prove him wrong!

We had a fantastic weekend with James.  All his sleep over passes went great.  We decided on Saturday to see if we could transfer him into the truck.  I got him standing by the passenger seat and had just commented that we wouldnt be able to get him in because the seat was too high.  Next thing I know he is in the truck trying to close the door!  He came for a drive and went to Walmart   with us!  The smile on his face did not fade for the hour that we were out!  We went for another drive on Sunday.
James started a group hand class this week.  It is his favourite therapy!   Although when I asked in front of his occupational therapist,  he told her that OT is his favourite and that she is his favourite therapist!  What a teacher's pet! 
He has some more physio time added to his scheduel now too.  They work on walking with the walker in his morning session and balance in the parellel bars in the afternoon.  He is doing great!  His movements and reactions are still quite slow,  but I am seeing a difference in the speed of his movements.  His balance is definetely getting better too. 
He restarted speech and language therapy too.  He seems to be enjoying those sessions too. 
Next week there will be a therapy assistant working with him in the mornings to help him become more independent with self care.  He is already brushing his own teeth and washing his own  hands.  He is starting to help with dressing as well!
He is now spending weekend passes with me and in two weeks we are planning a weekend pass home!  His next rehab review date is September 12th and hopefully we will have a clearer picture of when discharge will be at that point.  I am not in a rush though!  Outpatient rehab is pretty much nonexsistant in the valley,  so the more we can utilize here the better.

James is still doing awesome at his therapies.  On Friday he did a full lap around the unit with the u step walker during physio!  His therapist said that that is about 90m.  He was quite tired afterwards though.  His Occupational therapist is going to see if she can get him into a group therapy too.  He seems to be losing his fear of people,  so I think a group would encourage some social interactions.  He is super excited about Wednesday this week too,  he is going to spend an overnight at Jeneece place with me and his brother!  Then this weekend when his Dad and sister come to visit,  he will spend the whole weekend at Jeneece place with us!  The nurses will do some training with me over the next couple of days around the tube feed and medications.  I am pretty comfortable with them already,  but just need to officially have some training.  He has a new speech therapist now too.  He will start working with her on Tuesday.  He is starting to move his mouth,  wanting to talk,  but is unsure how to form his lips and tongue and is having trouble making sound when he wants to.  He has a great vocal laugh now,  and does make some sounds when he is working hard at something.  Just no actual speech yet.

It has been just over 6 months since James' accident.  I have been too busy to really think about that though!  he has been doing awesome at his therapies.  In the last week and a half he has graduated from the parellel bars in physio to being assisted in the U Step walker.  Each time he has a session in it he gets a bit better at it.  He sent his first text by himself this week too!  He is getting pretty good at typing on the ipad.  He is needing less assistance with his transfers too.  He gets himself up and mostly just needs support for balance.  He seems to working on wrapping some of the nurses around his little finger too.  Last week he convinced the night staff to get him up at 5:30 am to play video games.  Yesterday morning it was 3:30 am!  When the morning nurse came in she put him back to bed for a couple of hours.  He still did great in his therapies though.

Well tomorrow will be 3 weeks in rehab for James.   It has been a rough 3 weeks,  but I think he is starting to settle in.  They changed his meds just after we arrived and he became very anxious and we were given an ultimatum that if he didn't cooperate and participate in therapy by the end of this week they may have to send him back to Comox.  A new doctor saw him on the weekend and was able to get his medication back on track and he has had a much better start to the week.  He has become completely continent this week.  Not only during the day but at night too.  He got a new communication device today.  It has words in it and has predictive software so it is much faster than typing everything out or sign language finger spelling!  He loves gadjets and this is a pretty cool gadjet!  When we were getting him set up with the new gadjet today his favourite LPN came in to unhook his feed and give him his meds.  The OT prompted him to say something to the nurse.  James went into the social page and chose " I appreciate your assistance " and then he typed in "Bud".  It was so funny!    He is walking with the paralell bars in physio.  Yesterday he didnt want anyone actually touching him.  He walked the second half of the session with just verbal cues!  

 James got his transfer to Victoria rehab on Thursday last week!  So James and I are in Victoria now.  He is doing well and enjoying his therapy sessions.  He tryed to pull his feeding tube out this weekend though.  He got all the clamps and "hardware" off of the tube yesterday morning and had to go to x ray to make sure that it was still in place.  I have asked physio to come up with lots of weekend homework for him this week!  This boy needs to keep busy!  There are no therapy sessions on the weekend so I think that it had a lot to do with boredom.  It was interesting too,  I woke up last night with a start early in the morning hours.  I was having a dream that James was trying to pull the tube out again.  This morning I got to the hospital to discover that he pulled the tube apart again early this morning!  He didnt sleep really at all last night and was totally exsausted this morning.   He could barely keep his head up,  or his eyes open.  He was a trooper though and did all his therapies.  He perked up a bit during physio though,  and then had a great nap mid day.  His feeds changed today too.  He was being fed all night at a slow rate,  now he is being fed at a faster rate,  three seperate times.  Tonight is the first night in a long time that he can sleep without being disturbed or having to stay sitting up.  He will be able to lie right down from 11:00 tonight until 530am.  He has a special call bell on his bed too,  and he has used it.  It is a flat disc that he just needs to push.  Today in physio he got to try a new machine in the gym ( after an assisted walking session with the physio team)  The machine is called Nu-step.  He sits on a seat and it has walking peddals.  It also has "ski pole type" bars for your arms.  He really enjoyed it and had fun trying to make it go as fast as he could.  He did a great 5 minute session on it and we will increase the time he spends on it each session.  The wheelchair he has here is a lot different than the one he had in Comox too.  This one has very little support and no head rest.  He is doing really well with it.  I do try to get him to have a couple of short lie down in bed times during the day right now to rest his neck and shoulders.  He seems to need to have a break from the chair less each day though.  All in all things are going well.

Still waiting for transfer to Victoria for rehab.  If nothing has happened by the time we reach a week of waiting I am going to see about nagging.  The squeeky wheel gets the grease!  Yesterday James got to try the parallel  bars for walking.  Rick was right there for help and correction and had to help with mostly verbal instruction and and correction  quite a bit,  but James did the work.  He did awesome!  Before bed I had him standing and sitting at the edge of his bed quite a bit too. 

When the nurse came on shift last night she popped in to see James and myself.  She had picked up a gift for James!  She is going off shift for 4 days and wanted to get it to him in case we were gone when she came back.  It was so sweet. He reached into the bag and pulled it out on his own. She got him a series of little stuffed animals and a stuffed flower.  She wrote a note to explain the significance of them.  The flower is because a flower blooms year after year and so will James.  The lion is for bravery,  The donkey for stubborness ( which will take him a long way in rehab) and the giraffe to remind him to keep his head up ( physically and emotionally).  Those are definetely going to Victoria with him!