Answers to Questions

I thought I would take the opportunity to answer some questions that people have been asking.

Do feel free to leave comments or questions on the blog. Just click on the word "comments" at the bottom of this entry. I'll try to clarify anything that may be unclear. (If the subject is too personal, I'll say so.)

In no particular order:

Robb is not in pain, but he does get tired and crampy at the end of the day. His back gets tired, and his feet and ankles swell up impressively.

There is no stated time table for Robb's recovery. The doctors can't and won't make any predictions about how long the recovery may take, and how complete the recovery will be. We've heard that spinal cord injuries take as much as eighteen months to finish healing. Considering that right after the accident, Robb couldn't bear to move at all, the recovery he has made is nothing short of amazing

Robb showers with his brace on. He is not allowed to sit up or stand without wearing it. The brace is made of custom-molded plastic, riddled with perforations. Robb sits in a special chair while he showers, because his balance is still too unreliable to allow him to stand in the shower. After he gets out of the shower, he lays down in a big towel in bed, takes off his brace, cleans his torso, dries himself and the brace, and gets dressed. And, yes, once in a while he forgets to lay out his clothes for the day and then there's a big rigamarole of getting the brace on, getting clothes, and taking the brace off so he can put on the clothes he wears under the brace. This typically happens when I've already left for work.

If Robb drops the cane on the floor, he has a little contraption rigged up with magnets and strings so he can retrieve the cane. The cane gets dropped a lot. The magnets are in the handle of the cane, so that the tip of the cane doesn't pick up all sorts of ferrous detritus. Beer bottle caps and rusty iron probably don't combine well with walking.

I'm not going back to run the paint shop at the Glimmerglass Opera this summer. I had actually decided this prior to the accident, but in any case, there is no way I could leave Robb alone for three months while I head off to the other side of the continent.

We do have a small earthquake kit.