Get Well Darryl

There are few words to adequately express the horror that we all went through for the first few weeks of this most deeply rooted test of the human spirit.  It is still so raw I can’t bring myself to read the postings I made in those early days and weeks, so scared am I that the horror we faced will somehow claw its way back to the present.  But now, some three and a half months down the track as each day passes the footprint of improvement and tentative return to ‘normality’ seems to hide, at least in part, the path we walked in those early days.

In so many ways, so much of this journey has been a battle of will, of spirit and of all those intrinsic qualities for which no medication exists to create or enhance the existance of.  This is what I decided was the ‘test of you’ [Darryl], the test of what Darryl’s inner self is all about.  The hardest test of all to pass.  This test has reached a new point and it is that of patience as I have mentioned, but oddly a test that only comes when the recovery is at a point that some sense of normality is beginning to return.

You could liken it to that last few kilometres of a long trip, the last lengths of the pool after a long swim, the last few hours of a sleepless night.  The end is now realistically in sight but at that point it can seem further away than when you first embarked.  I guess much of that is because you can only really measure the journey when you have travelled it, there is little to gauge it on before that point is reached.

The reason I say this is because we are really only weeks away from the first major finishing line – that of going home.  But both of us have had our moments over the past week or so which indicate we are in transition from the  journey to making the dash for, well home!!  Darryl, for the first time in his life is having to deal with the fact that he can’t use his physical strength, skill and determination to shortcut to the end.  He must tick off each milestone and while he is doing it remarkably quickly for a young man who lets face it, cheated death, he is still not used to his progress being slower than his patience can tolerate.  I believe it will be one of the most important lessons to come from this experience for him, but one that will be a challenge for the next few weeks I have no doubt.

So while we have had some mental challenges to address this week, Darryl has had some outstanding moments which give me great strength to keep myself focused in on the management of both body and mind as he strives forward.  Over the last week he has mastered standing up on his own and we managed a series of 15 stands and sits in a row by Friday.  When he does get up on his feet he can get his balance very well and stand straighter than what he has done (with the help of a few slaps and pokes in the butt cheeks and hips from me)

He was also given the opportunity to climb the stairs to the gym, Jim, but not as we know it – 10 stairs in all.  With the help of myself and the physio -terrorist as Ann has affectionately become known, Darryl climbed up the stairs and then back down twice.  Admittedly he was a little all over the place and did a lot of the walking with his left arm – pulling himself up the hand rail, but it was another great achievement.  On Friday that was followed up by a walk of some 120 metres, backward and forward outside the gym on the veranda.  The first 2 ‘runs’ were with the aid of a walker, to which I found the need to yell out “run Forrest run” as I held the frame steady.  The laughter that roared forth did nothing to improve his flaying legs of course, but it was one of those monents I couldn’t let go by.

The second two lengths of the veranda were with just myself and the physio-terrorist at each side and it was by far the best walking he has done.  He is still a wee way off going solo, but it is approaching.  The improvement is consistent and so it is reasonable to anticipate this point arriving some time soon (ish).  We are doing a lot more exercises in the down time that will assist with his walking and balance, as I figure it is a case of building strength and relearning,  rather than an automantic outcome.

The same applies with his right arm which is going to be a continuing project, but I am confident it will get there.  A couple of weeks ago he had virtually no active movement and now it exists in just about every range.  The connections are there, it’s just a matter of time and of course lots of work outs with what Darryl has coined the stick of misery!!!  I keep telling him it hurts me more than it hurts him, but he’s not buying that at this stage!

The highlight for the week and the reason for the comments about getting closer to normality, is that Darryl came home with us to the house we are staying in at Auckland.  It was a great milestone to tick off – real food for the soul and spirit.  Darryl came with us to the supermarket (which is only a few hundred metres away) and we did normal shopping stuff, albeit he was in a wheelchair that I refuse to learn to steer properly so I collected a few shelves and the odd shoppers’ heel along the way.  Darryl sat on the couch and then lay down on the couch and watched some rugby, chatting with his sister and brother and sharing some laughs.

Probably one of the most important moments of recent weeks however came when we played Darryl back some video we have taken of him from the earlier days in this journey.  Specifically we looked at the 15th of June, some seven weeks ago, when Darryl was stood up for the first time in a sling with the hoist.  In short he was a mixture of a limp, hanging head and trunk with limbs like twisted reinforcing steel that were less than malleable.

Darryl sat there in tears when he saw for the first time just how stunningly inactive, immobile and lifeless he was, compared to what he is now.  The comparison is nothing short of remarkable  and thankfully very obvious to him.  We made the point of really reinforcing just how far he has come and in such a short time, relatively speaking.  It came at a price because he probably has little concept of how bad things were, but the flip side of the coin is very positive.  The reality is he knows how far he has come and that has given  him perspective on the now and also just how much more he can achieve in the next seven weeks.  It was good therapy.

There were some other great milestones which I will skirt over given their nature.  Darryl was able to stand and use the toilet for the first time, in true blokey fashion (something he was happy to share on the blog, in fact took great delight in the idea as well as the action itself).  I got him into a normal shower with a seat inside for him to relax on and of course for the first time since the 24th of April, he slept in a proper queen size bed.  He lay there with a grin on his face that could best be described as looking like a dog chewing ….well you get my drift, but he was a happy little camper as we all came in to join in his slumber delight.

He sat up to the table and ate with us, he sat on the couch and enjoyed a coffee and spilled crumbs all over the place, just like he has done for years.  It was so normal I wanted to freeze frame the moment and just ‘be in it’ for a while, just to savour the warmth of familiarity that a while ago I was so scared I would lose forever.   A weekend full of normal stuff and to cap it all off, on the way back to the rehab tonight we were both singing to the music and Darryl broke out in an air guitar!!  A priceless moment of humour wrapped in layers of normality – if air guitar could be considered normal!

While Darryl was less than keen to return to the rehab, we discussed the time line ahead and the realities of home, the home we both yearn to return to and for the first time we can really sense it on the horizon.   It was a rewarding few moments and something I think we can both deservedly take heart from in, reflecting on the work that has been done and the promise this brings ahead.  It was uplifting .  

Darryl, the mid point in this journey has been reached, the mountain you are shifting is now bigger on the side that you have moved it to, than where you have moved it from.  So too then, with each step you take, do you help to erase the long and fear-filled days that lead this journey out.  Days I am thankful you will have no recollection of . You are now healing more than just you, Darryl.  I am thankful of that also.

Love always.

Dad

For those who have children you will remember the feelings you experienced when for the first time your child stood on their own two feet.  You will remember the sense of pride at the achievement of this milestone equally shared with anxiety as you watch on at arms length as they sway tentatively trying to find their balance for the first time.

This is the same experience I had this Friday gone as Darryl stood for the first time on his own.  Except this time it seems like the feeling of pride and anxiety are amplified by the number of years that have passed since Darryl first achieved this feat.  But in his first go Darryl stood there, swaying like a rusty gate in a the breeze for 24 seconds.  It is the first major step forward in getting him to move forward under his own steam.

Having said that, by Sunday Darryl had managed to turn 24 seconds into more than 3 1/2 minutes.  Let’s just say we have been doing our homework over the weekend and aim to achieve the five minute goal the physio has set for Darryl.  I guess the appropriate analogy to use (ironically) is that it’s just like riding a bike, you never really forget you just need to get that sense of balance again.  The difference being we can’t afford to have Darryl fall over so the stakes are far higher.  But he is on his way to getting mobile on his own, something I continue to reinforce to Darryl is not only achievable but is just around the corner.

The week has seen Darryl continue to improve on a number of levels, the most humourous of which is his sense of humour returning in bucket loads.  He has got what I call ‘goldfish fever’ in that he often forgets little details in the day and will repeatedly ask the same questions and then crack a funny about the response.  Just like the humble gold fish that they say has a very short memory (how they know that I don’t know) and swims around the tank saying to itself repeatedly “oh wow, I haven’t noticed that before”, Darryl repeats his questions and quips in response, followed by roars of laughter.  I oblige by looking and acting equally entertained by his wise crack and the process begins again.  Eventually he remembers that he’s covered the teritory before and that becomes the source of even more laughter as the ‘gold fish fever’ reality dawns.   

He has also found his singing voice, with verses of his favourite Flight of the Concords album bursting forth at the most random of moments.  something that is just so Darryl!  So needless to say we can often be heard over breakfast singing away together, poorly, out of tune and mumbling the bits we don’t know the words for, with the odd mouthful of Sultana Bran firing forth like a gatling gun as he burst into laughter mid-mouthful.  Priceless!

 It is great to hear him using his voice more and more.  He has a long way to go with this and it does involve relearning the talking process and how to form the words but he is making great progress and I’m confident normality will return.

Darryl is now able to sit up straight and true, lay himself down and get himself back up into a sitting position.  He is doing step ups, putting weight on his right leg, which has been slower to return to life than his left.  He is also now far more able to lift himself from a sitting position up into standing which will no doubt come over the next week or so.

His right arm which really bore the brunt of the storming and was held constricted against his chest for the best part of six weeks, is now starting to spark into life.  I am really working this hard with Darryl because I know it really troubles him that it lays there limp when he is sinking every ounce of his energy into it to get it to flinch.  Over the last two weeks I have rubbed, slapped, pinched, massaged and flicked his shoulder, biceps, triceps forearms and fingers, all of which are now working – slowly but surely  For the first time since day three of this journey he was able to do a thumbs up with his right hand!  It was another tear-jerker moment and something I hope gave Darryl a sense of  certainty that he will get his right arm back.

Just in the last three days the active movement coming back in his hand and arm is impressive.  sure it is measured in centremetres in the beginning, but there is something to measure, that is the main thing.  If this process has taught me anything it is that if you don’t use it you lose it, and once you start to get it moving the outcome is only limited by the effort you’re prepared to put in.

On that note I should share one of Darryl’s funnies of the week.  I have been working his good left arm and his weaker right arm together by either having him interlink his fingers and push out his hands to my hand which I move around as a target or by using a piece of Lancewood that Darryl carved me as a Christmas present a a couple of years ago.  This can be used like a barbell for bench press, shoulder press, bicep and tricep excercises.  The thinking is that even if the left arm is carrying the majority of the load the neurons in the weaker arm will get the message to fire and start working .

In any event it is hard yacker, particularly with me  pushing him along from the sidelines.  On Saturday I went to his room to get the Lancewood stick and when I returned he said “oh no the stick of torture” to which we both burst out laughing.   Having said that I was laughing as I was locking his hands onto it!

Darryl works really hard and while it can be and is exhausting for him he knows that with each exercise, with each well formed word and with every milestone ticked off, he is closer to being home.  He is now evermore aware of his injury and the circumstances in which this life changing event come to pass.  Having said this, the other morning Darryl came up with an interesting revalation in that he said “Dad, this didn’t happen to me playing rugby, I just went to sleep one day and when I woke up I was here!!”   Followed by “Have I been asleep since 2008?”   That took a bit of explaining starting with the fact that he wasn’t actually Snow White despite the fact that I could be mistaken for a number of the seven dwarfs!  It’s all part of the process as his brain restores the scrambled information, but nonetheless it must feel like he walking through a bit of a maze. 

The weekend was a good one, a highlight for Catherine and I when our good friends from up home in the Far North, Sandra and Dion (the people who gave Darryl the greenstone dog whistle) came to visit.  The last time they came down was several weeks ago and Darryl was smack bang in the middle of a urinary tract infection, he was very out of sorts, I was very stressed and tired and we all ended up in tears. 

On this occasion Darryl was happy, joking, standing, talking and worlds apart from the state he was in when they had last seen him.  I really enjoyed sitting back and knowing that they could see how far he had come and all of us, including Darryl just ‘chewing the fat’.  I felt good about that, it was fuel for my soul and gave me a feeling  that my life is coming back too.  Those moments are like diamonds in the rough and just reward for the hard yards we have all put in, both family and friends.  Thank guys, you give me strength.

 Darryl made another comment to me a couple of days ago that shows his awareness of this situation is finding gravity.  He told me that he owes it to me to get better.  I took some time to explain to him that he doesn’t at all.  It went, something like this:

Darryl it is not me you owe it to, it isn’t your friends, your supporters, the staff here or any of us in your family.  You owe it to no-one other than yourself, and not because you got it wrong and need to put it right, not because you’ve had some bad luck and you need to square the ledger.  You owe it to you because only through real loss can real gain be found.

Think of it like this Darryl; when a mighty forest burns to the ground, it does so with great fury and creates a storm of fear as it destroys all that was previously great, but it is not until the burnt ashes of what once was great, lay dormant on the ground that the seeds of change can sprout.  And those seeds become the forest of tomorrow feeding off the burnt remnants of yesterday, far stronger, with more potential and with their horizons free from obstruction. 

Without that fire and that loss there can be no forest of tomorrow.  Darryl you owe no-one other than yourself to be that forest, otherwise the fire you were willing to endure has been for nothing and all that remains is charred barren earth.  So think not of the reasons for the fire but for the potential of the new forest.  You will stand tall, as do the Kauris that tickle the clouds back home in Northland.  You already do in my eyes.

Keep it up Darryl.

Dad.

Darryl continues to deliver in the recovery environment that has become his life, at least temporarily anyway.  It is with pride and a sense of relief that I see the therapists and specialists at this facility shake their heads with even helpings of admiration and astonishment as he surpasses their expectations each and every day.  It is a gratifying experience for all concerned to see this strapping young man making his way back, grabbing handfuls of the rope that he clung to in survival that now remains as a link to his former self.  Like a mountain climber who had fallen down the face of a cliff, he raises himself back one hand over another, one exhausting metre at a time.

This week has seen a daily haul of milestones yet again.  For the first time he was hoisted onto an exercycle and rode for five minutes, the last 60 seconds of which was nothing short of outstanding.  His legs drove up and down on the peddles with real determination and as the final second ticked over tears of relief and no doubt heartache ran down his cheeks.  The physio promptly rubbed his back and professed that he was progressing through her programme so quickly she was running out of activities for him. 

Following the bike ride Darryl had an excellent walk across and the gym and back, something that is improving every time we do it.  For the first time on Friday Darryl actually walked without the sling and hoist on as back up.  He had a physio on either side helping to give him balance and talk him through the motions he needed to coordinate, while I was at ground level assisting movement in his right leg, which is improving but still not moving as freely as the left.  Another major milestone out of the way.

Over the week he has improved markedly at holding a good sitting position and pushing up from this to a stand.  He also seems to be finding his balance far more and distributing his weight more evenly across both legs.  All these things which we all take for granted are having to be re-learnt.  As each physical milestone is reached it can effectively be ticked off and then built on.  Once he can do it, even if only poorly in the beginning, it demonstrates that the pathways exist and the improvement has the seeds from which to grow.

I often think of this process as comparable to a computer that has crashed and most of the files lost, but still stored on the hard drive.  And just as you would painstakingly recover lost files from a hard drive and restore them to normal operating systems, so too does Darryl recover the connections between his brain and the sea of nerve pathways that control his body functions, movement and coordination.  In this sense as each new file is found, the chance of a full and complete restore beckons.

Darryl’s eating has also turned a few heads having progressed within two weeks from nothing, to several large servings of each meal.  He is certainly making up for lost time there and on Friday, his feeding peg now entirely redundant, was removed from his stomach.  So, as with the trachie all that remains to remind us of this event is a small scar (notwithstanding the emotional scars that will not so easily be consigned to passing humour)

Darryl’s talking is improving each day and he has had a series of cognitive tests to ascertain the workings of executive function of the brain and his comprehension.  He has shown remarkable function in this area and even anticipates some of the tests giving answers before the question has even finished.  He has difficulty reading, not because he can’t read, but because his eyes are still recovering from damage to the cranial nerves (the 3rd and 4th nerves which control eye opening and movement).  He can write quite well, albeit with his left hand at the moment, but he knows what goes where and comprehends perfectly normally.   In all it demonstrates that the executive function in his brain is in tact and bodes well for a very good recovery. 

One of the real challenges this week has been trying to help Darryl comprehend the world he is now awakening to as he traverses the gap between the foggy existence of the past 11 weeks and sharper focus of ‘the now’.  As I mentioned last week he is shifting out of the state of post traumatic amnesia and the reality of the situation is becoming clearer.  He has stopped asking repeatedly what happened to him and seems to accept that it was due to playing rugby but struggles with the idea that he can’t remember it or the circumstances around it.  Possibly because this makes it seem even less real than the foreign environment he has woken to, or possibly because buried deep in his subconscious is the memory of the conversation he and I had the weekend before this  about the risks (as I saw them) of him playing and what could potentially happen.

The reality of his injury has come into clearer focus however as for the first time earlier this week, out of nowhere he said “Dad, I’m sorry I played rugby”.  At which stage we both dissolved into tears,  made less painful by a hug we embraced in, almost with relief.   

I say this because in the first few days of this nightmare as Darryl lay fighting for his life, I would have given anything to get to a point where I could simply tell Darryl what I now had the chance to say.  I told Darryl, that he didn’t need to be sorry, there was nothing to feel sorry for.  He was living life as he believed it was there to be lived and I understood why he played (despite my instinct as a parent screaming NO at the thought of it).

I explained to him that life is defined by its highs and lows and indeed it is not what happens in your life that is of real consequence so much as the way you deal with it.  So it is that character is chiselled from the rocks of adversity that fall like a landslide across the journey of life.  It may sound cliche but life is in my view 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent what you do about it.

Darryl, I am so relieved that I have been able to have that conversation with you.  So relieved I was able to just say “it’s OK”.  It has been a painful burden for me,  that the talk we had a week before this happened was near as can be to a script for what has actually happened.  And knowing you as I do, I know you would be hurting also, that what you truly believed wouldn’t happen, had.  I will never forget first seeing you in critical care, your painfully swollen head and trembling post operative body fighting for each heart beat.  I will never forget the total desperation I felt as my world collapsed inward on me and all that I thought was important dissolved like ice in a warm water.  I will never forget that all I wanted was the opportunity to say “it’s OK Darryl, it’s OK, don’t worry about it”.

I am just so glad I have now had that chance.  I am just so glad that the any sadness and remorse you may have shouldered through this horror, can be put to rest.  Some day, who knows, it could be that this hand that fate has dealt will show itself to have some higher or greater purpose.  It has definitely made me a better father and it will no doubt make you a better one some day too. 

I know there is a long way to go Darryl, but you are coming back, all the way – no question.  There is nothing to apologise for, there is no need to look back, life is what lays ahead of you, made better by what you have overcome along the way.  There are few ordeals that could be more challenging than that which you are overcoming now, but just as my instinct screamed that this would happen, so too does it tell me that you will recover to a full and outstanding life.

I am proud of you Darryl, because just as you said at the gym the other day. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”. And you are going mate, you are going bloody well.

Dad.

A week can be a long time in life as we found out 9 weeks ago.  They don’t seem to drag by as much any more, in the main because Darryl is forging ahead making such positive progress now.  I have almost found myself looking forward to the next day, where for so many weeks I dreaded each new day and in the beginning I was struggling to even face them.  

Darryl has turned a number of corners in recent weeks, each adding to the last and building hope from the ground up like a skyscraper under construction.  But the major corner turned in the last week has been his return to talking!  He is back!  

As with all in recovery from serious brain injury, the old nerve pathways have been severed and you have to find ways to re-start them.  This is easier with limbs and extremeties as you can manipulate them and make them work, but how do you do that with a voice?!  When someone has ‘forgotten’ (for want of a better word) how to speak, how do you begin to re-start this essential function?  I tried massaging his face and neck and this helped him to murmur but it was not improving anything.

Last weekend I had an idea that laughing might help as when you do this, sound comes out automatically.  All I had to do was get him to laugh!  Bearing in mind Darryl has had no facial expression since this incident I knew just getting him to smile would be a task, let alone laugh.  As I mentioned last week, I decided to show him a video of someone farting repeatedly, which he found amusing enough that he did start to smile.  A breakthrough moment.

Over the course of Monday,  Tuesday, Wednesday I made as many jokes and wise cracks as I could, trying to encourage  laughter.  And slowly the odd, beginnings of a chuckle sprang forth.  I worked with this as much as possible and by Friday night we had some genuine “haha” sounds coming out.  Friday night I spent about an hour getting to him make two haha sounds then three, then four and so on.  I also had him do morse code haha’s like hahaaaaaha.  He was now effectively able to make sounds (albeit needing to be kick started with a joke) and realise that he was reponsible and in control of the sound coming out.

The breakthrough came at about 7.3o am on the Saturday when I was doing this haha practice while I was doing his stretches.  Once he was up and running and the “haha’s” were flowing I said hahaha – how, he repeated it back.  Then I just said “how” and he repeated it.  I then said “how are you” sort of all run to together, and he said “how are you”, to which I replied, I ‘m fine Darryl, nice of you to ask, then promptly burst into tears of joy as we both laughed.  

From there, it was like a switch had been flicked and talking was back in gear.  Over the next half hour I thought of as many words beginning with ‘H’ as I could and confirmed in my own mind, and his I expect, that he could and was doing it.  Within a short period he was clearly saying three or four word  sentences and while speaking slowly and needing considerable effort it was clear he could speak relatively normally.

So it was that with a little coaching as Catherine , Brook and Brenna, my parents who were down staying with us for a couple of days, and my brother Len and his wife and kids, entered his bedroom they were greeted with Darryl asking them “how are you doing?”  And for each new visitor he asked, he shed a tear or two of joyful relief as the recipent of the question stood, mouth dropped open with tears running down their cheeks.  It was very special.    Brenna was absolutely gob-smacked and giggled uncontrollably as she stared at Darryl with rekindled joy.

Since Saturday morning Darryl has taken some degree of pride speaking to all the staff at the rehab and even shared a couple of words over the phone.  Improvement in his talking was made even within 24 hours.  And what a moment of pure  jubilant relief it was when I asked Darryl how he felt about being able to talk again and he said “I feel good Dad”.

So that is a major milestone ticked off but there have been many others over the week.  Each day brings a new set of achievements and improvements.  Some of these this week have included progressing from having a few sips from a cup to downing an entire glass of water, gulp after glorious gulp.  He had his first coffee today(abeit cold) he really likes a coffee. 

Once he started progressing with swallowing water we started to introduce yogurt to him.  He has gone from a teaspoon or two of yogurt, to this evening having baked beans, a scrambled egg, half a banana, half a pot of yogurt and a cup of juice.  This was on the back of having a fairly impressive and equally sizeable lunch earlier in the day.

He now brushes his own teeth, not only exercises himself in bed, but arranges his his pillows, sheets and his right arm which has been in a cast most of the week as we have been working to break the tone and straighten it out.  

This week has also seen major improvement in the gym, Jim, but not as we know it.  He has gone from being hoisted to standing in a sling to just being stood up from a seated position and then helped to keep his balance.  He does a quarter squat and then stands back up from it.  He shifts his weight from one leg to another and bends each leg and re-straightens it. 

He has now been sitting upright on his own for over two and a half minutes, doing bicep curls, shoulder presses and chest presses.   He bridges (lying on his back with his heels up to his bottom) he lifts his bottom and back off the mat.  He will do sets of 10 of these at a time.  He then does trunk twists, twisting his legs from one side of the mat, up and over to the other.    

He is doing resistance activities now where he is not just being stretched or doing an exercise, they are applying resistance to his movements to build strength.  Each day he improves his range of movement and increases his strength, physical and no doubt mental.

It has been a very good week of progress and re-gaining a lot of what is taken for granted in day to day life.  He has been in the rehab facility for almost five weeks.  I can only imagine what he will be like in another five weeks time.  I can not speak highly enough of the terrific team of skilled, caring and compassionate individuals who have been working with Darryl.  It is definitely a team effort and they all go the extra mile, every day.  We are fortunate to have such an amazing facility in New Zealand and even luckier to have the people working there that are .

Darryl, it has been a huge week and it is hard to single out one highlight from another.  There are so many.  But of all you have done to date, hearing your voice for the first time and seeing you cry with relief, surprise and happiness as it happened, is something I will never forget and will always treasure.  It has been a monumental struggle for you so far and you have come so far, back from the brink.  There is a long way to go and many stones yet to move but the load gets lighter with every milestone you achieve.

To hear your voice, your feelings and your thoughts over these last two days has filled my heart with a new sense of joy and hope.  It is a major part of you that I feel we have back.  The parallel universe we have traversed together has now become one.  And it feels so good.  It just feels so damn good.

Love you mate.

Dad.

It is getting hard to keep up with Darryl’s milestones!  Even his physio is struggling to adjust the programme to keep pace.  Each day he learns, or re-masters is probably more appropriate, a former function.  To name a few, he can now turn his head left and right, up and down.  He can poke his tongue out and to the left of his mouth and the right.  He scrubs his teeth with great finesse and can use a torch to pinpoint photos, and any item we name that is on the wall on the opposite side of his room.

Up at the gym he has been been rolling onto his side, mostly under his own ’steam’.  Actually that is probably a very appropriate term to use because his own ’steam’ is working very well as I found out this morning when stretching his thighs up toward his chest.  It was a special moment, not because I was in the firing line, but because when I responded with a suficient degree of repugnance, Darryl smirked – the first time I have seen him smile in 8 weeks.   I guess it was worth being ’steamed’ to see that. I think!

He has been pushing himself up to a seated position from lying on his side. He has been kicking a balloon with his left leg and is now starting to get a tiny bit of movement in his right leg.  He pulls his shirt on and off and helps pull his shorts up.  He washes as much as he can reach when he’s in the shower (that is a bath). He even takes off his rugby head gear – identically to how he has done it for years.  Each day he gets something, or lots of things back.  As Bill Thurston keeps reminding me, he is putting the pieces of the puzzle back together.  And much like a jigsaw puzzle, when you get to a tipping point in that the picture starts to make sense and the amount of pieces left makes it easier to see ‘what goes where’ , it all starts to happen with more deliberate purpose and the process develops a life of it’s own.

I’m not sure that we are anywhere close to that yet, but the ‘carrying away of stones’ is certainly making some serious holes in the mountain to be moved! 

Yesterday brought a classic Kodak moment when the speech therapist was working with him and wanting to illicit a smile.  This is difficult because the tapestry of facial muscles are still in the process of waking up as the nerves  start to fire again.  Anyway the therapist ended up using her fingers to push the corners of Darryl’s mouth up to form a smile.  Having done this a couple of times she asked Darryl to try and smile, to which Darryl sat for a few seconds, emotionless.

What happened next had us in hysterics.  Darryl, obviously tiring of not getting his face to work, brings his hand to his mouth and skillfully using his thumb on one side and forefinger on the other forces the corners of his mouth up into a smile and then turns his head to face the therapist.  It was priceless!  And so Darryl.  If I can’t do it one way, I’ll find another.

Darryl, you may have been knocked down, literally as well as figuratively, but your spirit, courage and strength have never waivered and at all times remained intact.  In many ways, it is those qualities that have seen you survive this most foul hand of fate.  What was fear and anguish beyond my wildest nightmares is now giving way to the seeds of recovery and a new sense of future.  There is nothing surer than all our lives have changed forever as a result of this. 

Lets ensure that the change is like that of a forest felled by fire in that new growth flourishes with the passing of the old.  That new trees will now stand taller and stronger than what their predecessors did.  In nature we learn that it often takes tragedy for real growth to occur and the ashes of destruction are the catalyst for change rather than the remnants of loss.   And never forget, that the mightiest oak tree grows from the tiniest of acorns.

Keep passing the test of you Darryl.

Dad