Shriner's - Day 19 (cross-post)

Another day over. Sometimes it amazes me how fast the days go by. Overall, I find the days fly by til about 4:30...then after that, they DRAG. It seems a long time until it's time to go to bed. Ah well...at least the roommate is gone and we have the room back to ourselves. And so far, I've heard that next week is not so busy, so hopefully we'll be roommate-free next week.


It was another typical day at Shriner's for Ben. An hour of OT, 2 hours of PT (including 1 in the pool), some time in the stander and of course the bike. Plus, lots of time in the playroom.

We had more progress with Ben's walking endurance today. It's funny how counting steps seems to motivate him. But it does so we'll go with it. This morning he thought it would be fun to count how many steps it takes to walk (with his walker) from our room to the playroom. I really can't believe that he walked all that way, but he did it (with just 2 little breaks)...all the way there...all 350 steps!

We are slowly moving towards not using the wheelchair at all during the day as next week, the wheelchair will be off limits until after supper. So Ben needs to get all around the hospital either in his walker or on his bike.

At PT this morning, he got to play with the Wii Fit again...and I managed to get some photos. In this game, it's all about weight shifting and balance. He has to shift his weight back and forth to get the penguin to slide back and forth on the iceberg to catch the fish to eat.

You can see how straight he gets his legs now and how well he's shifting his weight...with just a bit of help from Stephanie.

And now, back to other side.

We are a bit sad tonight (at least I am). Nora Lee and her mom, Nathalie are leaving us tomorrow. They are 2 weeks ahead of us in this process so they are done at the end of day tomorrow. So this is their last night here. We have become quite close over the last 4 weeks and it won't be the same without them in the room next door.

And now we await Ben's first weekend outside of a hospital in 5 weeks. I can't believe we are already to this point! Daddy and Daniel are actually on a plane as I type and will arrive a bit later tonight. They'll stay at the hotel tonight and then come over in the morning at some point. I anticipate that after a little visit, Daniel and I will leave for the day and let Daddy see what Ben's day is like here at Shriner's. And then they'll join us at the hotel around supper time.

I think this weekend will be a bit low-key. It'll be nice to just hang out as a family again. We are staying at the Fairmont (Queen E) again so are connected via tunnels to most of Montreal's downtown. Plus, there is a really nice pool area at the hotel. So we'll eat, shop and swim the weekend away.
I'm not sure how great I'll be at updating the blog over the weekend, but I'll try to at least update it by Sunday night...I'm sure I"ll have lots of great photos from our weekend.
Happy weekend everyone! Just 2 weeks to go!