Shriners Hospital II

Today is another day!!! Stetson has been released to walk with me on the floor whenever he chooses. Yesterday and this morning he walked about 50 to 60 feet. Yesterday he went for his tennis lesson and had a great time. He also learned new techniques to work on. I guess we are taking up another sport!!! never thought that it would be tennis. Today he has left the building!!! Our good friend Jeff came and got stets for a guys day out after he got out of football practice. What an awesome young man he is to come all the over from Sierra College to take stets out. I guess they were going to the new batman movie. He is also going to come and take us to Six Flags tomorrow since there is no therapy tomorrow. The weekends here are soooo boooorrrrriiiinnnngggg!!!! We are hoping to come home by friday next week. more updates to come!!!

Shriners Hospital

Just to update all of you, we flew to Sacramento California on Monday and arrived at Shriners Hospital. The first couple days were rather frustrating for me and a little for stets. Our plane was late leaving Portland and late getting to Sacramento so we were late getting to the hospital and didn't get to try his new brace until the next morning. I have consistently told the doctor that we want stetson loaded up with physical therapy but due to the number of kids here they only can do about 45 min. to an hour with him a day. He is also required to attend school while he is here. He is not thrilled with that at all. He is learning a little spanish and doing math mostly so far. Jeff, one of our friends from Oregon is attending a junior college not far from here and so he came to see stets today that was really cool. They are going to try and go do something this weekend since stets has a pass to leave the hospital for up to 6 hours. Tomorrow he is going to have about an hour tennis lesson from a guy who is a sanctioned adaptive tennis instructor so that will be lots of fun for him. Today he didn't do any walking at all just alot of stretching which is helping him with his standing. He is making a lot of progress. The doctor and pt (physical therapy) told us that he would probably take about 2 or 3 days to get used to the brace and to learn how to use it and the first day he had it on took about 4 steps and knew how it worked. We are looking at being here about 10 working days which is about 2 weeks, unless he plateaus and then they will just send him home since he can do most of this at home and at therapy. Stetson is not in a private room his roommate arrived on the 15th and believe it or not he is from Oregon too!!! He is paralyzed from the neck down due to a vehicle accident in which he was driving but no one else was hurt in the accident just him. In the past couple days I have really been reminded how lucky we are to have stets and that his injuries could have been a lot worse than he is. We are truly greatful. I have also gotten the priviledge to share a room with Alex's mom and gotten to know her. More to come later.

ONTARIO YOUTH BASEBALL

While we were busy with Baylie playing softball we also had Chase playing baseball. He had practices on Mondays and Wednesdays and games on Tuesdays and Thursdays. His team also traveled to different towns to play. The furthest we had to go was 45 minutes away in a town called Adrian. The closest game we played was here in Ontario. We were happy to play at those ones. Between the weather not cooperating and the traveling we had our time on the baseball fields this year. We had weather that felt like it should be football season and then the next week would be high 90's to just right with the cloud cover. His team did okay but not great this year but we keep telling him its not the winning that counts its if he had fun that counts. He did a great job batting and this year he played left field and caught some incredible balls this year. We are so proud of him and how well he played. He also got to go to a baseball camp that the local community college baseball team puts on and he learned a lot at it and even got to watch and help that team practice. He is looking forward to playing again next summer too.

GIRLS SOFTBALL

Starting in June when school got out Baylie started a new season of baseball only this year she wanted to play softball. She was a really good first baseman. She really wanted to catch and at her last game the coach let her be catcher and she did an awesome job even though she is tall for the position. They basically worked with the girls on the basics of playing softball but she still had fun. She was on the same team with her cousin Taylee. They had the brightest shirts of the whole league. She is looking forward to playing again next year.

WHEEL CHAIR SPORTS CAMP

Stetson participated in a wheel chair camp for kids ages 6-21 years old. He had a great time and met alot of new people. He learned how to play tennis, canoe, kayak, rock wall climb, played power soccer, basketball and so much more. He set the course record for the day on the obstacle course, shot air rifles and was invited to shoot with a trainer possibly for competition because he shot so accurately. He also met a lot of really neat people. It was an awesome experience for him and he plans to attend again and possibly in the past be a coach or a volunteer at it. He also recieved the award for the "MOST COACHABLE ATHLETE".