Hi All,

Guest Blogger Jim back on line.

Today we saw Dean working with Venus, his PT. During the portion I witnessed, she had him scoot along the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor and his torso upright. His goal was to get to the end of the bed. Once there, with assistance, he stood up and pivoted to place his back to the wall. With his heels against the wall, his task was to shift his balance from his right to his left, alternately supporting himself on one side and then the other. Even though he responded yes when asked if he was tired, he wanted to continue with the exercise until the set was complete. Afterwards, he was to scoot back down to the center of the 'bed' and lay himself down with both feet off the bed. First he lifted his left leg and then he was told to lift his right leg with a bent knee. He was almost able to bring it up onto the bed without assistance (if he had been wearing his shoes, he probably would have had enough clearance to complete the command).

At this, I took the kids down to the cafeteria for ice cream and when we met up with Dean in his room, we started up the poker game again, this time with chips rather than the push tacks. The game shifted from 5 card draw to 7 card stud, in order to up the complexity of the situation. Dean gave the kids a lesson in how to bet. With one particular hand, Dean had 3 10's in his first 3 cards. He bet 1 chip. The next card paired Riley with 9's...he bet 5 and Dean and Miya saw the bet. The rest of the cards were dealt and Dean consistantly bet a single chip to draw the others into the net. When the cards were revealed, Miya thought she had a chance with 7's & Riley thought he had won with 9's. In fact, Riley started to scoop the pot when Dean flipped over his cards, still with a straight face. It wasn't until Riley figured out that he didn't win that Dean gave his little smirk, another lesson in life for the young man. Soon after, I suggested that perhaps the kids and I should leave and let Dean have a few moments alone to rest and read the newspaper before his next therapy session - to which he eagerly agreed. So off we went to the Long Beach Aquarium (Miya says she likes the Seattle one better).

So tomorrow promises to be another day of hard work and small progressions.

until then,

Jim

PS...I finally ran into some Famous LA traffic. on the way home on the 405, it took 20 minutes to get to LAX. the reader boards said the next 2 miles past the airport would take 20 minutes so I got clever and got off the freeway and over to LAX and then Lincoln. 90 minutes later, we got home in Venice.