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Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, United States

This blog is a record of events in the life of Joseph Taggart and his family since his spinal cord injury while body surfing in Guatemala in January 2006.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Living Hand to Mouth -- 3/1/06

For information on helping out, see http://www.bringjosephhome.com/

Matthew Cowley said achievement was "a milking machine salesman who sold two milking machines to a farmer who only had one cow. . . then took the cow for a down payment." (see http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=134 for the MP3 file) For us, achievement is a 24 year old tetraplegic (the current medical descriptive phrase they are starting to use instead of quadraplegic) who wakes up every morning knowing he is going to have a great day, and is committed to ensuring everyone else who comes in contact with him has a great day as well. Joseph is awesome, even if he is our son!
He has worked so hard all week. Misty, (Physical Therapy) mentioned, the end of last week, that sitting up longer will improve his lungs and breathing strength. He has spent many hours sitting up in his chair each day since.

Kasey and Andrea (Occupational Therapy) have been working on his left arm so he can begin to feed himself and brush his own teeth. Joseph has them laughing like crazy. When Gretchen (nurse) first met him she asked, "are you left handed?" He smiled and quickly replied, "Now I am". He works so hard and has so much fun pushing himself and kidding the staff. A half dozen or more of the staff have brought their children in to meet him (and some their pets as well).
Weston Brown (see Update 2/3/06) is back as a roommate with Joseph. He is a great young man and has a wonderful family. He is doing quite well, It's good to have him back. Joseph's friends have started bringing him "real food" and he's loving it. Wait till we tell you about the adventure we are having with Joseph on Friday during lunchtime. More about that next time.

PHOTOS:
1) Misty (Physical Therapy) works with Joseph on the "tilt table".
2) Joseph works on getting a spoon to his mouth. We were grateful they didn't start with a fork. The spoon hurt but didn't draw blood)
3) Kasey and Andrea (Occupational Therapy) work on Joseph with a new sling contraption to help him brush his own teeth.
4) Weston Brown is back as Joseph's new roomie. Yea! On the right is Barb (Respiratory Therapy) Joseph is glad to have her back from vacation.

1 Comments:

Blogger Gym Rat said...

Yeah, spoons are much better to learn with than forks. I wonder if it's this hard for toddlers to learn to use utensils. What an amazing journey you are on. Still cheering for you!!!

Mar 2, 2006, 8:14:00 PM  

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