Month: August 2013

The Team Save Janet Report is Out. #tsj #sailaway #roadtrip #blueberries #nanaimo #kelowna

In order to catch a ferry that would get us home in time for church tonight I actually had to set the alarm on my phone so we’d be up in time. It wasn’t too early, 7:30, and Janet was very good about it. We were able to enjoy a leisurely breakfast and take our time packing and we said goodbye to my mom at 9:15 and drove off to the ferry. Good thing we went early as that sailing was eighty percent full when we got there and totally full fifteen minutes later.

The ride across was pleasant and uneventful and after a stop for pizza and a salad in Caulfeild we hit the road.

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Janet did a great job eating in the car and we made good time for our pit stop in Hope. Our timing there was great. The gas pumps were super busy so I took Janet inside for a pee break surprised to find the washroom empty and by the time we were back outside there was no wait to gas up. I wish all pit stops were that smooth. Janet slept on and off the rest of the way taking one last pee break at the Tourist Info Centre just before West Kelowna.

We arrived at church five minutes before service time and are really glad we went. This weekend, instead of a message taught by one of our talented pastors, Jason Hildebrand acted out the story of the Prodigal Son. It was brilliant. Here’s a link to a YouTube clip that gives you an idea of the experience. If you ever get a chance to see him do the whole thing, do it.

Janet and I decided on Boston Pizza for dinner and I’ve never seen Janet eat so much. All but one slice of her Mediterranean pizza plus most of the Santa Fe Salad we shared and she still had room for ice cream later. That’s my girl.

Once home it was into the hot tub then the PJs to watch SYTYCD before bed. Janet’s ability to travel has definitely improved since our first roadtrip and we are also figuring out how to do things better as well. This adventure was a good one and we look forward to a day off tomorrow. Thanks again to the Nielsen’s and my mom for helping with the blueberries. Praying for lots of rest tonight and a fun day tomorrow.

The Team Save Janet Report is Out. #TSJ # Nanaimo # blueberries #roadtrip

Day two of our Nanaimo blueberry roadtrip began after a decent nights’ sleep despite the never ending squawking of seagulls. Janet was nice and bright and looking forward to the day.

The blueberry farm is south of Nanaimo in an area called Yellowpoint and is home to some of the oldest blueberry bushes in the province. We arrived around 10:30 and got right to work. Our family friends, Wendy, Tove and Neils Nielsen were recruited by my mom to help us out. Good thing too, as by noon we (they) had picked 47.5 pounds of blueberries!

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Janet did a great job picking, getting nearly a bucketful in the time we were there.

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She had a little trouble in the quality control department and surprisingly I had to remind her occasionally she was allowed to eat a few as she picked. Overall I think it was a great experience for Janet as no one was watching over her shoulder while she did something. She was on her own with me checking for quality and quantity once in a while.

The group decided to go for lunch at Cherry Point Estate Wines, a winery in Cobble Hill. It was well worth the drive as we enjoyed a nice meal, conversation and sunshine together. Can’t say I’d recommend the wine we had with lunch (Pinot Gris) but their Sparkling Rose was quite good. The food was good and very nicely presented. This was Janet’s salad and yes the flower is edible.

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After being out in the sun most of the day, Janet welcomed a little rest time when we got back to mom’s. that recharged her for a long walk around the neighborhood where we saw up close, two young eagles and two bunny rabbits along with lots of very expensive motor yachts from the USA. Janet and I tried to convince mom to go for dinner on the docks where we’ve heard the fish tacos are amazing but seniority ruled and we enjoyed a nice home cooked meal. My cousin Brent and his partner Kaj dropped in for a visit all the way from Port Alberni. Super nice to see them and we were reminded of how good the Alberni crew is. Hope to see the rest of you soon.

Tomorrow is sail away day and the drive back to Kelowna to start freezing blueberries. Praying for a solid rest tonight and a safe, enjoyable journey home.

The Team Save Janet Report is Out. #TSJ #Nanaimo #roadtrip #blueberries #traffic

Ok, going to try old school blogging on a daily basis again as staying up late to write each Wednesday isn’t working for me.

Today is day one of a little roadtrip to Nanaimo to visit my mom and pick some of BC’s best blueberries. Janet’s day started with a not so busy morning as the staff were quite busy, so after a shower and breakfast it wasn’t until 11:30 that Jess got her into the gym. They managed to get through a good routine and when I walked in at 12:20 Janet had just finished her lunch and I watched her clean up her dishes. I love spying on her and it was really cute how she looks at something like a garbage can and expects it to automatically open. She’ll also put a cup or something under a water faucet and expect water to magically start pouring out. I guess our new house will have to have motion activated everything. As soon as she’d put her plate away she headed for the patio to get warm. Wheeling right passed me she clearly was on a mission and when the doors wouldn’t open just because she was there she did try and push one side open. That was too tough so Jess helped her and I followed undetected. Janet saw the car and became suspicious then turned her head enough to see me. It was nice to watch her try and do so much on her own as opposed to sitting there waiting for something to happen.

We hit the road on another hot Okanagan summer day, the type of day that makes it hard to leave but knowing it was nice on the coast too I looked forward to the drive. Silly me. I’ve made the trip to Horseshoe Bay a number of times in less than four hours so today, since we planned on catching a ferry out of Tsawwassen I allowed an extra forty five minutes. Should have been plenty but was no where close. We missed our ferry by an additional forty five minutes but drove straight onto one sailing to Victoria.

Janet slept most of the drive down, waking for a pee stop in Hope where for once it was sunny, then the traffic hit. I knew we were doomed when we were barely doing the speed limit passing Chilliwack. When we came to a complete stop two kilometers from the George Massey Tunnel it was officially game over. Not all was lost though as the ferry ride to Victoria was beautiful and went by quite quickly.

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We had a decent dinner with a great view. A good practice run for a real cruise.

Once on the Island I figured it’d be clear sailing to mom’s. Not today, as at 8:30 at night the main highway was reduced to single lane alternating traffic in the middle of a Provincial Park. Only in BC.

Nine hours after leaving Kelowna we pulled up to my mom’s place in Nanaimo and went straight to the hot tub as it was “closing” in minutes. The stretch was really good for Janet after sitting so much this afternoon and the Fresca on the balcony afterwards was gone in record time. We are looking forward to a fun day in the sun tomorrow.

Footnote. Just after leaving Connect we saw John wheeling along the road and stopped to say hi. He hasn’t been able to do his sing along stuff with Janet for a few weeks as he’s having trouble with one of his meds. Please pray for him, he’s in good spirits as always but clearly suffering.

The Team Save Janet Report is Out. #phonecalls #cleaninghouse #chicago

Well here we are again, one week after the last update, so much for my plan to be more prolific with this.

In a lot of ways this was a fairly quiet week for Janet. No weddings, no road trips, no huge signs of progress that warranted an immediate blog update. When I look back at my notes though, its clear it was a good week.

Janet continues to show massive improvement in her cognitive abilities, especially with short term memory. She more frequently knows my name now although this week I’ve been Dennis, Bert, Julie, Ralph and Ted but mostly Larry. When asked now, I see Janet thinking before speaking rather than blurting out the first thing that pops into her head. A few times she’s even said “I forget” instead of calling me something she knows is wrong. We can now talk about events that took place in the morning with Janet able to describe a little bit about them and if the event was big enough she can even talk about something a day or two before hand. Her memory is not yet filing things in chronological order as evidenced by an emotional outburst one day when she thought for sure Laurel and or Heather were to be visiting her. She was so sure of it she called Laurel and me wondering why no one was there with her. She wasn’t able to reach Laurel but the call to me consisted of lots of tears of confusion and frustration. On the flip side, when asked what she wanted to do one morning, she remembered without prompting that she wanted to reply to an email sent from her friend Annette a couple days earlier. For some reason, probably old memory, Janet insisted on hand writing a letter so I gave her a blank greeting card and a pen and left her to it. Twenty minutes later she’d managed a decent note. I could read about a third of the words she wrote which is really good considering I couldn’t read much more of Janet’s writing even before she got sick. Janet has always had a strong sense of commitment and loyalty and so the obligation to reply stuck with her. She’s not great at filling a page yet but always has a good idea of what she wants to say and is improving her typing skills each time. I’ve noticed her vision is better the more awake she is and have noticed that applies to me too. The glasses are on now.

Janet was a big help in getting our house and yard cleaned up for a showing this past Saturday. For the first time she was able to vacuum on carpet and did a great job dusting some areas down for us. A sense of purpose is huge for Janet and I love seeing her eagerness to help with projects like that. Lorne had her vacuuming the living room at Connect this morning and said Janet had a smile on her face the whole time. I wish there was more I could get her to do. Yard work is great as long as Janet can reach what she’s to be working on and unfortunately most of our weeds don’t grow that tall. During the showing we went for a long walk along a route we hadn’t taken since Janet got sick. She remembered a lot of it and loved looking at all the nice homes. Nash was having trouble with the heat and distance and Janet was quite concerned about him. Thankfully he drank water from the lid of her water bottle and that comforted Janet. The thought of selling our house is dominating our time together and Janet both enjoys thinking of what the next house will be like and is somewhat reluctant to see the current one go. She’s very astute at recognizing how it doesn’t make sense to stay here much longer. My body thanks her for that.

Janet’s reading skills are improving as well. Laurel and Raj sent a thank you note following their wedding and Janet read most of it to me unassisted. I could especially understand the parts she read without crying. She’s had some real emotional moments lately, I think from a greater awareness of her situation. I sense a little bit of her feeling she needs to contribute more or be able to do more for her family and doesn’t fully understand the kids are all grown up and out doing their own thing. A few times when driving home and I ask her what she wants to do she’ll respond with “whatever everyone else is doing”. She doesn’t get upset when I tell her its just her and me but for a moment I think she was back in time and there were kids living with us. Janet is living more and more in the present though and confirmed that today when I allowed her to answer a stupid call from her bank. They asked why she hadn’t reviewed her banking needs with them for over a year and if something had happened to cause that. She told them flat out, ” something big happened with my health”. The guy on the other end heard that and repeated it but couldn’t deduce that maybe that was why he had been having trouble hearing Janet for the duration of the call. She was conversing very well with him just not very loudly. Hopefully it was enough to prevent another call.

The gym remains Janet’s nemesis and best tool at the same time. Her strength is gaining noticeably, especially on the Shuttle. Garret suggested a slightly different position for Janet’s legs on the Shuttle and it allows for a much longer extension, now up to thirteen inches, and Janet is able to push more weight too. She absolutely hates the Standing Frame but I think has resigned to knowing she’s got two sessions a day in it and as long as she feels she’s in control of how long she in it for she’s ok. There hasn’t been a lot of swimming lately but what Janet’s done has been good. The hot tub continues to be a happy place for her and the time when I get the best stretch of her legs and right arm. Noticing some nice improvement in her right shoulder and the Botox is working well with her finger flexors. We went to see Julie at the hand clinic for a follow up visit and she was surprised at how nicely Janet’s hand is doing. Julie did not expect to be able to adjust the splint yet but with Janet tolerating it well and her hand being nice and open, she was able to mold the splint to allow an even more relaxed position for Janet’s hand and said we don’t need to come back to see her unless something is wrong. Good news.

Team Save Janet has expanded into the Windy City!

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Thanks Brenda for carrying the colors there and if anyone else has a picture wearing your gear in a far away place I’d love to see them.

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Praying for Janet to keep getting stronger, especially her right leg. Praying for restoration of the use of her right arm and hand and complete restoration of her vision. Thanking our Lord and Savior for the healing he has brought and for all of you who continue to pray and support Janet and I.

The Team Save Janet Report is out! #colonoscopy #standing #swimming #shopping

Each time I come to writing this blog update I think I’m going to shorten it or use a lot of video to simplify the process but Janet keeps amazing me and others with new things she can do almost on a daily basis. Therefore, I think I’m going to publish future updates randomly as events warrant and certainly more than once a week. Twitter is still your best channel for being the first to know and you can follow me at @larrylatour .

The week got off to a challenging start for Janet as Tez had her on the parallel bars Thursday afternoon for what was supposed to be a short test of her capabilities. Twenty minutes later a very tired Janet was allowed to sit in her wheelchair after balancing and walking up and down the bars while hooked up to a sling. She did better than expected and if she can get her right leg stronger will be on her way. Her strength definitely has improved as that night she was able to do a set on The Shuttle with five bands of tension. A first. To round out the day Janet responded to some emails by spelling out the words she wanted to use while I guided her finger to the appropriate letter. I’m impressed by her ability to spell.

When I arrived Friday to pick her up a little before our agreed upon time she greeted me with “I’ve been dying for you to get here”. Karl had put her through her morning gym routine nicely but she was focused on going home for the weekend. We made a few stops along the way for some new pajamas and then some groceries. I figured with the air temperature being thirty eight there was no way she’d think the pool water would be cold but this is Janet we’re talking about. She got used to it after a few minutes and had a good swim. Then helped make a grilled chicken Caesar salad, something she never would’ve eaten before but really enjoyed this time, possibly because she helped make it. As we sat down at the end of the night to watch AGT and enjoy our Blizzards saved from last week, Janet was extremely disappointed that hers was so small. Not sure how that happened but I ended up having to give her some of her regular ice cream to make up the difference. Janet loves her ice cream.

I’m sure it wasn’t the ice cream that kept Janet awake most of the night and it wasn’t being all hyped up about a daughter getting married the next day either, I was just glad I didn’t have to take her for a walk at 3am. I let her sleep until she said she was ready to get up around 9:30 and a good Saturday began then. Janet phoned her mom to see if she wanted to Skype with her and of course she did then it was out into the yard to pull weeds, cut some things back and transplant the wedding plants into a permanent location. We had a great time working together on things Janet could easily reach. I think Janet really enjoyed the different tasks and she seemed genuinely interested in re learning names of plants and trees. After a nice swim where Janet got some push from her right leg we experienced an awesome service at Trinity. Janet was singing and clapping along to the songs and loved Wayne’s message entitled There Is Always Hope. Watch it There is Always Hope if you like. By the end of the night Janet was nice and relaxed and set up for a good nights sleep compared to Friday night. Part of our regular bedtime routine is to have Janet stand for a while prior to getting into bed. Usually she’s tired and a little weak and she will tolerate ten seconds with me holding her up. Saturday night however felt strangely different to me and I decided to let her go briefly to see what would happen. She actually didn’t fall over right away and I was confident she could actually stand. Sure enough after a couple of tries she stood all by herself for a few seconds. I was so excited I had to try and get some on video. This is the result as posted that night,

and this is a little better footage shot today in the gym.

Janet is standing on her own now for close to thirty seconds at a time and correcting her balance more and more. She still needs to gain confidence and trust in her self but its coming. Very cool!

Sunday arrived and I was a little nervous about it as Janet was scheduled for a colonoscopy Monday which meant Sunday was prep day. In case you’ve never been through this, as we hadn’t, prep means not eating anything, drinking four liters of a fluid designed to “flush” your body out and drinking clear fluids as much as possible. The part that made me nervous was Janet’s history of not wanting to drink much of anything and certainly nothing fast. She took five hours to drink the first two liters instead of the prescribed two hours but at least she got it in her. Before the flushing started we got in a nice long walk a short swim and a leisurely hot tub. The evening was very quiet with a “few” trips to the bathroom.

Janet was very cooperative throughout the colonoscopy adventure and I’m very proud of her for hanging in there as well as she did. The actual procedure went very well and Dr. Agnew reports a normal scope with no blockages or polyps found and no evidence of any mechanical reason for Janet’s constipation. He recommends Janet continue on a high fibre diet along with the Resotran and Peg 3350 if needed. He said normal bowel movements are considered to be anywhere between one to three times a day and two times a week so if we can keep Janet closer to the high end of that scale she’s doing fine. As a reward for getting through a difficult couple of days I treated Janet to a really nice dinner at Joey Kelowna,

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a place we’ve been to a few times and always enjoyed but for some reason don’t think about that often. It’s high on our list now. Yummy.

It didn’t take long for Janet to bounce back after that tough weekend and she even surpassed her previous status. Proof came when Jess found her in the bathroom, standing up ready to sit on the toilet Tuesday morning. The Team’s goal for Janet is to be doing supervised transfers by early October. Here she was trying to do an independent transfer and almost making it. The pace with which she is gaining balance is very impressive to me. I hardly have to touch her during pole transfers now and today she was starting some transfers without the pole, only grabbing it once she was up. On her last transfer from the toilet tonight I saw a move with her left foot that was a lot like a step forward and it made me very excited about the possibility of Janet walking again. Last night she also demonstrated her smartness again by typing an email pretty much completely on her own. No help with content or spelling from me, just a little guiding to a few letters, otherwise, all her.

The trend continued today with the aforementioned awesome standing capped off by her wanting to go to outdoor movie night where she laughed and smiled all the way through Dodgeball. Janet couldn’t tell me what she found so funny about the movie but at the same time she could hardly stop laughing even as I turned out her lights at 11:05. Great day. Great week.