Goings On

It's only Tuesday and I'm already exhausted.  It's been a long week.  I'm still taking one day at a time, but the last few have been pretty good.  The next few will be a challenge.

Last Friday, some of my friends threw a party in my apartment.  Gus made his famous ribs and baked beans, and Caitlin brought 7-layer dip, and Kelly made ice cream-cookie sandwiches.  I bought a bunch of beer, and a bunch of people came, and we had a great time.  It was nice to hang out with a bunch of my friends at once.

Jessica, Cullen, me, Titus, Uyen, Gus, and Ben

Brittany was there too

Brian checking out Ben's new phone

Gus showing off his ribs

Buddha Bear was there too

Later, Buddha did some body shots

I was happy my neighbors didn't call the police.

Saturday morning, Gus's family left for Kansas, but my friend Emily used some of her vacation to fly down from Philly and stay with me.  Emily is my cousin's sister-in-law, and happens to be a neurophysiologist who works on a surgical team that does spinal surgeries like the spinal fusion I had.

Emily and I have always gotten along well at family functions because we have similar interests, including the fact that she rides an SV650 like the one I used to race.  Her family owns a dairy farm up in the North Country near where my family's farm is.

Emily

Emily and I had a great time hanging out and watching movies.  She also helped me out with a bunch of things around the house.  Unfortunately, she had to leave this morning (Tuesday), and I'm going to be mostly by myself the rest of the week.  We'll see how that goes.  I know I have people I can call if I need help, but except for dinner Thursday night, nobody actually scheduled to come over.

While Emily was here, we spent some time out on the balcony, and it is definitely starting to feel like Summer is over.  It's not cold outside yet, but there were a couple times when it definitely wasn't hot either.  I'm worried about winter.  It's hard enough to put on gym shorts and a t-shirt by myself.  Emily took me to Target to shop for some long pants, but I haven't tried to put them on yet.  I'm worried about putting them on and getting them off by myself.  If I can't, it's going to be a loooong winter.

Otherwise, things are going okay here.  I'm not sure, but I don't think my HO is getting any worse, and the same for my spasms.  They're still not good though.  I'm starting to think I'm likely to end up with a baclofen pump at some point, but I'll worry about that later.  For now, I'm just going to keep taking things one day at a time and seeing how things go.