The road to recovery.

Well it's been a week since I wrote an update so I will do my best to catch you up.  When there are less appointments happening we are able to enjoy our time together and I don't sit down and write an update!
Last week I went back to work for my normal shifts and Isaac was back into his normal routine.  Rob was happy to have some peace and quiet to relax at home....infact I think he may have been happy we were gone for a bit!  While he was at home he was able to work on eating and creating some delicious pureed food.  On Tuesday he stopped using the tube to get his food and by Thursday he was feeling confident enough in his intake that I called to see if he could get it pulled before the weekend.  On Friday afternoon we had a few appointments at the hospital and we were able to meet with the Speech Language Pathologist Candace and she pulled the tube.  It is tough to go in but easy to come out and Rob felt great having that last tube removed!  He is now consuming more calories then they had him on with the tube feed and has started gaining back some weight.
Our next appointment on Friday was with Greg from Physio.  He specializes in hand and wrist therapy.  He did an assessment on Rob and was able to give him some exercises to improve his mobility in his hand, wrist and elbow.  If there is one thing I am surprised at is how quickly Rob's muscles have atrophied over the last month and Rob looks forward to gaining the strength back.  Today we stopped in to see Greg again so he could assess if the exercises were helping and they have made a huge difference even in a few days.  He even said Rob was a "model patient".  Rob now has some new exercises to work at starting to strengthen his muscles and we will go back in a couple of weeks.
The last appointment on Friday was with the nurse from plastic surgery.  She looked at Rob's skin graft, his trach wound and his mouth.  It is funny to me that when we look in his mouth it is hard to picture what it will look like in the end but when the nurse looked at it she said the flap looked beautiful!  She was very impressed with how everything was healing.  Friday was a good day of appointments with lots of positive encouragement. 
This weekend we were able to enjoy some of the beautiful weather outside.  On Saturday we packed up lunch and spent a few hours at a park close to our house with some friends and Rob's sister and her hubby.  It was a really great time.  We also went to church again and had a really powerful time worshipping God.  Rob and I both feel our worship has more depth and when a song talks about trusting God through a tough time we have done that so the words are more meaningful.  We often hear the phrase "worshipping in spirit and truth" and this is so true for us right now. 
Today was Rob's follow up appointment with Dr. Nason and we had hoped we would get the pathology results so we would know what the next step is.  Unfortunately Dr. Nason has not received the report yet.  It was disappointing to not leave there knowing but we both feel a sense of peace.  Once he receives the results he will call us but until then we will keep focusing on recovery.  He was very pleased with Rob's recovery so far.  He reminded us once again that the process is slow but it was going well.  It will be months before he is able to really notice a difference in his speech and eating but that is part of the process.  We will see him again in 4 weeks but in the meantime he basically told Rob to live his normal life as much as he can.  He also said that Rob was ok to play disc golf which made Rob very happy!  He has to make sure to protect his skin graft but getting active will help him recover faster.  Rob does get tired very quickly and needs to rest between activities but we love the time we get to go on "adventures", as Isaac would say it, as a family. 
Love Karen