Happy Anniversary Chris & Andrea!!

We hope you are having a fantastic vacation!
Love, Andrew & Abby

Physical Therapy-Day Three

So today when I pulled the car up to get Andrew from P.T. he came out of the waiting room and said, "Hey Abby, look at this." He then lifted the walker over his head and walked to the car. I was shocked and scared, but he actually did really well. I think he said he walked four laps around the "track" at Mercy too, so that's awesome. We took some pictures of his foot the other night after he had soaked it in the pedicure foot bath, but I decided they were way too disgusting to share with our friends and family. I mean his foot literally peeled off. So gross but now it looks nice and pink.

Hey Andrea!

Hey Andrea-
When you read this could you let me know how to change the time for the site. Obviously I wasn't making posts at 4 a.m., but I don't know how to set the time!
Thanks,
abby

Day 1: Physical Therapy

Andy had his first day of physical therapy on Friday. He will now go 3 times a week for about an hour and a half each time. He had called around town and asked different people for their opinion, and then decided on Mercy Hospital. First impression of the facility: seemed very professional and the therapist was quite thourough. (This first appointment was over 2 hours with paperwork.) After she checked his range of motion in almost every imaginable way she went through the exercises he can do at home. The picture on the right shows the bilateral toe curl (pick up the plastic bag with your toes). Also, Andy will do ankle pumps, a supine hamstring stretch, a standing terminal knee extension, and a hanging knee extension daily. Then she went over the machines that he will use after they meet for appointments. She seemed concerned over the hyper-sensitivity of his foot and the contracture of his right hamstring so those will be two main things to work on.
Immediately after the appointment Andrew's foot was twitching and jerking and he was in quite a bit of pain, so we are going to talk to her about that on Monday. Also, if anyone has one of those pedicure water foot baths or ankle weights (less then 5 lbs.) let me know. We would use them here at home. Thanks!

Fantasy Football

Thursday was the draft for Fantasy Football which Andrew's brother Chris was nice enough to let me join too this year. It's me and nine guys so the pressure is on to represent all the female NFL fans and not choke. Somehow I got the second pick so I was pretty happy with that. The only flaw: I forgot to check the bye weeks of the players I was drafting and ended up with a lot of players on bye week 5. Week 5 is the week that my team plays Andrew's....Here are our teams.
Abby's
M. Hasselbeck (SEA-QB)
D. Foster (CAR-RB)
S. Alexander (SEA-RB)
M. Harrison (IND-WR)
D. Mason (BAL-WR)
A. Crumpler (ATL-TE)
S. Graham (CIN-K)
Chicago (D-ST)

Andy's
T. Brady (NE-QB)
L. Tomlinson (SD-RB)
R. Bush (NO-RB)
R. Williams (DET-WR)
T. Holt (STL-WR)
T. Heap (BAL-TE)
N. Rackers (ARI-K)
Carolina (D-ST)

If anyone has any advice let me know!!

The oven isn't new anymore!

Tonight we broke in the new oven and we weren't messing around...lasgana, garlic bread, and lemon bars for dessert. It works pretty well, I think. The new appliances are nice, but they each have there own different beeps for things. The fridge beeps if the door is open too long and the oven kept beeping, but I don't know why. I might be more ambitious to figure out why if the manual wasn't the size of Webster's Dictionary. Here is the new stove in all it's glory.

One Month and One Day

So it's been one month and one day since Andrew's accident. I must say the last few weeks have been a huge blur. Andy & I want to give a big thank you to our friends and family for all the help and support that's been offered. We really appreciate everything. We met with his doctor in IA City today and here is the update...
1. Andrew must begin aggressive physical therapy 3 times a week here in DBQ. P.T. will consist of strenghthening, reconditioning, and gait training.
2. Andrew no longer needs to keep his leg wet wrapped. They want it open to help it dry out more and to allow some of the dead tissue to slough off naturally. He also can shower without wrapping his leg in a trash bag.
3. His pain medication has been switched from the Dilaudid (sp?) to a pain medicine specifically for nerve pain. He is currently experiencing a lot of shooting pain and twitching in his foot and this new medicine should help that.
4. Andrew had a cast of his foot made today for a leg brace he will wear in his shoe for an unknown amount of time. The doctor said since he can't pull his toes or his foot up there is a chance that he will drag the foot and need the brace to keep from tripping. Good news though, he can push his toes down some, so we should see improvements with the physical therapy.
5. We will go back to the doctor in 2 months so no work until at least then.

We stopped out at the job site today so Andy could say "Hi" to his co-workers and to drop off his new work release. They were really happy to see him and to hear how things have been going. I think they were surprised at the amount of weight he has lost and how pale he is right now, but overall glad to see him.

First Post

Okay, so we're going to give this a try and see how it works. I enjoy reading Chris and Andrea's blog with all the Zach updates so I thought we might copy off of them. After all, we've had some exciting stuff happen the last few months, right?