Days 54-55: Good times

Days til brace off: Maybe 24

Days til move: Maybe 9

My last day here will likely be the 11th.  Tony, my roommate, leaves tomorrow.  It’ll be good for him to get home but I’m sad to see him go.  Jayme leaves the 10th, a day before me.  Jeff is leaving as soon as his house is ready to go for him.  Others are leaving soon, too.  Apparently this is how it regularly goes where people all come in and then leave in waves.  

Yesterday was really fun.  I think I only had group exercise in the morning and that’s it.  Rebecca hung around a lot and then Stephen and Leah showed up, too, as did Laura (Rebecca’s roommate from DC).  We made it up to Guthrie’s for a couple beers, Papa John’s, and a few games of Jenga and Taboo.  Guthrie’s has tons of good drinks and board games and is really close to Wrigley Field, where I lived for a bit (the area, not the stadium).  Good times, except for when Rebecca got all heated that I couldn’t treat words as homonyms in Taboo (you can).  Yogi “bare” counts, right?  The whole thing ended up being hilarious.  The entire night was great.  I didn’t even care about getting out of the car in the rain and having to get helped over the curb to get into the bar.  It was nice since I was bummed I didn’t have the energy to make it out to Nina’s 30th birthday the night before.  It’s really annoying not being able to plan things since I don’t know if I’ll have the energy and/or nausea.

After a fitful night where I woke up every 1-2 hours and then couldn’t fall back to sleep, today went pretty well.  I had balance in OT with Veronica at 10:15, which was just sitting and lifting dumbbells.  Then after a shower and rest I got on the FES bike with Martha as PT.  That was cool.  It shows you exactly how much work you are doing, how much the electrodes are helping as a percentage of the whole, etc.  Really cool machine.  Then we just did some stretching and resistance training.  She said she was surprised with my increased strength in my hips.  

Rebecca and I hurried to catch the 66 bus (all Chicago buses are equipped for wheelchairs) to head over to church at Park.  It was a great service.  Afterwards I went down to talk with Jackson who really overwhelmed me by telling me how much the church staff is praying for me.  I wasn’t expecting that at all.  Definitely felt the presence of something far greater than me in that service.  Powerful.  

We had dinner at Chili’s and now here I am.

That’s really all I have to say tonight.  Hopefully I can get better sleep!  I hope anyone reading this is doing well.  God bless.

G’night,

Chip