Wednesday May 27th 2009: First Shower!

Life keeps rolling on down here in GA. Will had his first shower today- he said it felt AMAZING! (Imagine how you would feel if you hadn't showered in 17 days!) We both went on to have productive mornings. Will had OT & PT. He practiced some more transfers with the slide board, practiced getting himself dressed, and also started to work on bathroom transfers. I went to the gym and got a run in and then went to a yoga class. The yoga class was great- it was for patients and families- there was even a therapy dog there! After lunch Will hit the gym to do some upper body strengthening and I sat in the garden for a little bit. Will then joined me for about an hour. When we sit in the garden we chat, but as you can see from the picture below (and as some of know quite well...Will loves his "Crackberry" :) Where would we be without cell phones, blackberries, pagers, emails??? Oh that's right, 1980 :) Anyways, we also got a visit from one of the research coordinators and Will has agreed to take part in 2 different studies here. One study will look at Shepherd's best practices (along with 4 other hospitals in the US) and the other study will look at Shepherd's current assessment tool versus another tool that 2 different hospitals (Univ. of CA and a hospital in Israel) are recommending. This evening I got out for a bike ride with 3 other women (one is a PT at Shepherd). Shepherd is very close to the swanky part of Atlanta called "Buckhead" We passed some very beautiful Southern homes.

Will's friends are in the process of putting together a fundraising event in Chatham. I don't want to spoil the name of the event so I will wait until all the details are finalized :) The funds raised will help cover the costs of things that are not covered by insurance (certain equipment, travel costs, etc) I will post more details when I get the final word on everything. I am still trying to fight a battle with the insurance company. To make a long story short- we had to pay out of pocket to fly Will down here. As you can guess it was not cheap- to be exact it was $10,900. His insurance company approved his admission to Shepherd and will cover him while he is here, but they would not cover the transport here because "it was not an emergency." They only cover emergency transportation. Well how the hell was he supposed to get here? It's maddening and very frustrating. Anybody know someone who works for an insurance company? If you do, please let me know! Tomorrow is a phone appointment with social security...just another thing I don't understand! All the paperwork can really be overwhelming! I was glad today was pretty much a "paperwork free" day :)