Nurses to the rescue!

Thank goodness we're not at home. Graham woke up early this morning in terrible pain. His catheter had become blocked, which caused a lot of bladder pain. I informed the Manor Care staff of the problem, and the nurses came running. He was given pain medication and a new catheter was quickly and relatively painlessly put in. If we had been at home, we would have had to call 911 and go to the ER. It would have been a horribly painful long ordeal getting it fixed.

Graham did fantastic in physical therapy today! He has made such progress, his therapist Cathy actually cried (out of joy). When she first started with Graham, he couldn't even sit up without flopping over. Now he can balance himself pretty well and move his arms all around at the same time instead of holding on to the bench for dear life. And he's getting faster and faster with his handy dandy sliding transfer board, or whatever the heck those things are called.

We're looking forward to Thanksgiving. Gary will join us for the dinner, and friends John and Erika will come for a visit. Graham will have a break from radiation that day, so I'll have time to go get little Micki and have her stay with us for the day. We haven't seen her for almost two weeks. We can't wait to see how her whole body wiggles with happiness when she first sees us.

What is sort of weird with dogs, though, is that they're just as relieved/excited to see you after you've come back from taking out the garbage for five minutes as they are when you've been away on a two week vacation. Strange but true.

Although if she follows her usual pattern, Micki will be unhappy to leave our friend Alice's house. Alice cooks chicken and hamburger for her dog and Micki. I only give Micki dry kibble. You can imagine Micki's look of disgust and dismay when she sees the return of her bowl of dry dog food. She looks at it, then looks at me pleadingly, as if to say, "Noooooo!! I want the good wet stuff that Alice gives me!!!! PLEASE. Look how cute I am. Please??" When I don't relent, she looks at the dry food again, and then just sort of sighs and mopes away.

We wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving Day! We're so thankful for all of our wonderful family and friends who have shown us such amazing support and love. And I'm so thankful that I still have my handsome sweetie here beside me and that he's still happy to be alive.

There's this awful moment every day when, after Graham wakes up and eventually comes out of dreamland, he makes the realization that he's (at least for now) paralyzed from the waist down. You can see him rapidly going through all these emotions ("What the heck is going on here? I can't seem to sit up or move my legs. Holy crap. I can't move! Oh my gosh, I remember now. Oy. Oh well, it is what it is. " ) and then, one little tear starts to roll down his face, but then he literally grits his teeth, quickly wipes the tear away, and gets on with his day.

So, it's not that he's oblivious to his condition. He just chooses to spend his time focusing on what he can do to make progress rather than on what he's lost. True to form, he enjoys the physical challenge of it. Most people hate physical therapy; Graham LOVES it. :-)