2012

We're just over a week into 2012, how has your year been going so far? I can't mine has been all that out of the ordinary. On New Year's Eve though, I did have a bit of a victory, I was actually allowed to go barefoot during our celebration! In some ways it kind of felt weird, being the only barefoot person there, but I reminded myself that is what bare footers generally experience, and there wasn't any reason not to be barefoot. However, I only got away with it by agreeing to a comprise.

The next Saturday, so two days ago, we had a party of sorts for my grandpa's, mom's father, 84th birthday. Since it was mom's side of the family, I had to wear shoes then. I had somewhat planned on it anyway, but mom didn't need to know that. So, a victory of sorts, but not one that I see lasting unfortunately.

For most of my life, I have been surrounded by medical people and a lot of various items that go along with day to day living as a quadriplegic. Due to these reasons, I have a booklet that describes in detail how to do my multitude of cares. The current instruction set was last updated when I was in my late years of high school, so, due to some asking by my current caregivers, I started to redo my book last week. The current version is 13 pages long, I'm now up to 30 pages on the new version.

I realized that things were changing with age, but you don't fully grasp it until you put it down on paper. In some ways, it's partially me being more thorough and knowing the problems I have with some of these routines, and what some nurses come up with. Now that I'm nearly complete, I wonder what I'm missing and new items will come up after training someone with it.

A few hours ago, tomorrow's day nurse called in that she was sick and the backup lady can't cover it, so it will be the first shift of the new year without coverage. The weather this winter has been very nice and warm, for Iowa at least, so it has been nice not having calls off for snow or ice. Last week I even went running errands in just flip-flops, and barefoot outside! If I had a bucket list, that would likely be an item I could cross off, go barefoot outside in January in Iowa.

For about three years now, I've been doing the reading plans on Bible Gateway. It's pretty simple, pick a plan and you will read through the entire Bible in a year. During the last two years, I have been reading through with a fellow quad friend from Florida. It has been interesting working through his questions and seeing the Bible, something I'm very familiar with, through new eyes. This year we decided to just do the New Testament as he, and I, want to look more in-depth at that section of scripture. It has been nice only reading one, or less, chapter each morning instead of three to four, but I'm not sure I'm getting much out of it yet. The later books will likely be more learning, but I haven't got my head into the shorter reading I guess.

In my last post a few weeks ago, I was working on getting my diaphragm pacemaker fixed, well I'm still working on it. Finally today the referral paperwork went through, so now I'm waiting for approval from insurance before I can make an appointment. I'm nearing a month now that I haven't been breathing, so hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Until next time.