Fun Weekend Leading Up To Discharge

We had a great weekend here at MD Anderson. It started Saturday with animal assisted group therapy. A group of volunteers and their dogs from WAGS come to MD Anderson every Saturday for group therapy. Roger had a great time and it was nice to do something different. Saturdays can be pretty quiet. He worked with four dogs: Zeke a black lab, Cowboy a poodle, Sesame a yellow lab and I can't remember the last dog's name but it was another yellow lab mix. He threw a ball for Zeke to fetch. He started out sitting in his wheelchair then stood. He worked on his balance and lower legs. Then he gave Zeke a break while he pet Cowboy the singing poodle. He "walked" Sesame for a while which was good as the PT there that day had him try walking differently with his quad cane. And it turned out to be better for Roger and helped him a lot. Then he relaxed with another yellow lab. The volunteers were really nice and cared a lot about helping the patients. You can see a video of Roger playing fetch with Zeke below and more on YouTube and more pictures on Flickr.



We had lots of visitors this weekend from our Houston friends the McPherson family and our Austin friends the Farnies and Lana Joy & TJ. It was great to see them all and spend time with them. And it really made our weekend go by fast. Which is great because it got us to Monday faster. We are super excited as Roger will be discharged tomorrow sometime. The only appointments he has tomorrow is to practice getting in and out of my vehicle with one of the PT's. Then we'll be discharged at some point and we have a reservation for dinner to celebrate our anniversary at Feast. We are super excited to go there for dinner. We have been wanting to try them out for a while. Then we have appointments on Wednesday with Roger's neurosurgeon before we head back to Austin. We are both eager to get home and sleep! It's been hard for both of us to sleep well and rest here. But the show doesn't end then. We already have appointments on Friday in Austin for an OT and PT assessment so Roger can get started with OT and PT as soon as possible with no breaks plus the exercises they gave us last week to do three times a day. You can watch a video below of Roger walking today without a cane. It won't be long before he's back to "normal". ~ Holly