Row

May 30, 2012


Maximillian completed his third full week post-op and began his first week as an boatsman.  Cue The Smother's Brothers at the Purple Onion--1965 (you can hear it all starting about halfway through this clip:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3yEDLSOKYI), where you can hear Tom preface the track "Dance, Boatman Dance" with an eccentric comment about the seafarers who “go into town and pick up their oars.”


NOTE:  This is NOT an appropriate entry for America's Funniest Home Video.

He looks so serene, and I imagine the whole experience must feel really liberating after 19 days of bed to bathroom, bathroom to recliner, recliner to kitchen table, and kitchen table back to bed.  And that is the benefit of planning!

And when I say planning, I mean Black Op-level planning.  We spent last weekend doing reconnaissance and considering supplies, technology, and equipment.  We mapped and re-mapped access routes and spent just as much time on the return route.  We broke the process down to stages and phases and practiced them in the living room.  Then we did a dry run:  out the back door on crutches, transfer to wheelchair, across the porch and deck, through the carport, down the ramp, through the yard, over and around various cypress knees, and we finally made it to the dock.

Transferring from the wheelchair to the boat required the most planning and practice, but the advance work to stage all the equipment was substantial as well.  

Maxi will have his foot x-rayed on Friday and we will know a little more about what his roadmap looks like.  I'm hoping for at least a skosh more weight-bearing.  A good report from the doctor will lighten my guilt for leaving town Saturday as I head to DC to do a little business in the childhood cancer world.