April 30, 2013 Painting and Therapy

We have almost reached four weeks since Bryce's surgery and he's made great progress. We had a P.T. appointment yesterday and scheduled another for May 15th with Dr West. The P.T. gave Bryce the thumbs up on his improvements! His flexibility is getting better and he is gaining his strength back. They also printed off two x-rays of his hips so that we could compare the before shot and the after shot. That was pretty amazing to see the visible change on his bone structure. On Saturday, I came home from Gracie's soccer game and found Bryce on his bicycle pedaling a complete rotation. He continued this for 25 minutes! (If you don't remember, he could only go about 3/4 of the way around and then would pedal backwards with me on the left pedal.)

To fill up some of his time, Grandma has been over a few times to give him some watercolor lessons. (I attached a picture of his progress) This watercolor is of Ben Lomond Peak- from a photo taken recently as you can see the snow capped peak. I will send more photos of it as he makes more progress. Every day we view this majestic mountain from the front of our home and it is always beautiful.

For the past two Sunday's, Bryce has been to church. (Sacrament meeting) Sitting up for long periods of time sure does get his hips burning. We quickly run him home after the meeting and pack up the ice machine and let him lay flat for a few hours. I did try to get him to recline a little on Sunday and put his legs across my lap, but he felt a little bit self-conscious about that. He didn't want to look to casual or relaxed at church. Technically he wasn't supposed to be sitting up for more than 30 minutes either. However, when you begin to feel cooped up in bed for long periods of time, the pain doesn't seem so bad when you get to go out. He has a great smile he is always willing to share no matter what he's going through.

As of yesterday, he is allowed to get around without crutches or a cane, unless going far distances. He moves pretty quick around the house when he has the walker. The walker also has it's advantages- like the attached basket for the times he goes to get the mail, and it has a seat for him to sit on when he gets tired or needs to wash his hands or brush his teeth. Sometimes he acts like an 'old' man when he walks around with the walker and has a smirky smile on his face as he bumps into the walls or pushes past his siblings who are standing in his way. (My walls are still okay and his brothers and sisters really just chuckle when he does silly stuff like that.)

Bryce has been a great asset to Tom- last week he edited some of the movie clips for his presentation of the columns Tom made for his project. (These were hours of video footage of Tom's columns when they had them in the machine that crushed them to pieces.) He also had to e-mail some info to Tom when he was at the school for his Dissertation proposal. (Tom had a few technical difficulties) He has helped with transferring files from one computer to another and multiple other tasks that have helped lighten the load. All of his video production classes and photoshop classes and computer programming classes have paid off. He definitely has a talent working with computers.

On Sunday evening, we watched "Praise to the Man" as a family. It gave a brief history of Joseph Smith's childhood and they mentioned that he was on crutches for 3 years after they broke off the bone in his leg. Can you imagine using crutches for 3 year? I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the nice padded kind with adjustable lengths. What a great example Joseph was of "enduring to the end." We keep hearing inspiring stories and how the individual was able to endure to the end. We have also been listening to "Divine Signatures" by Gerald Lund as we drive to our appointments and back.

Once again, we are grateful for all the prayers and visits. We are so blessed to be among such great people who are such great examples.

We are looking forward to another great week!