1/3/17 - Sam's Journey - First Day of School

This clip has been referenced multiple times today. Sam had a great first day at school. In the days leading up to the big event, Sam was beside himself with excitement. When I asked him how his day went today, he hadn't backed off too much from that. He even has a quiz tomorrow! Other than singing, school is the main reason this kid got up each morning. It is good to have him back in his natural environment.

Just in case you thought everything went smoothly, I assure you it did not. We started off in a bit of a panic when Sarah woke us up at 7:45 after I'd forgotten to turn on my alarm volume. I'm amazed that everyone got to where they needed to be. On time. Wearing pants. Hopefully tomorrow goes a little smoother. 

Thanks for all of your support to help us get to this huge milestone in this weird and wild trip we've been taking. Here are a couple of pictures from the day. The beam of light was totally unintentional and at the same time is a symbol of what today meant for Sam and all of us.

12/25/16 - Sam's Journey - Merry Christmas!

We've had a fantastic Christmas break so far, and we still have a week left! After our trip to San Antonio, Sam finished up his last week at rehab. Here is a video of him as he was leaving: 

Yes, he would have kept going if Dee hadn't stopped him.

We know it is time for him to move on, but it was very bittersweet. We are indebted to everyone who has worked with Sam, and we are sad they won't be a daily part of our lives any more. However, we know we will be in touch since this past week, we went to his original rehab and reconnected with some old friends who helped him get going on this journey. The doctors, nurses and therapists were blown away by how far he has come, and we can't wait for future visits!

It has also been good to actually have a Christmas. While the intermittent power outages have made preparing food interesting, they are nothing compared to what we were going through last year. 

I'm asking again for your prayers, for a smooth transition to school and the new schedule. I'd also like to lift up two very special little girls fighting the good fight of their own TBIs. They were both injured Thanksgiving week in separate car accidents. Please pray for Liberty and JayFay and their amazing families as they go through mirror images of what we did last year. 

We wish all of #TeamSam a very Merry Christmas, and our prayer for you is for health, peace, and happiness in the new year!

In closing, here is our family photo after Christmas Eve services:

12/11 - Sam's Journey - Day 365

It is very hard to fathom that tomorrow (Monday) will mark one year since the accident happened. We're kind of dreading it, and at the same time it gives us an opportunity to celebrate how far Sam has come. Monday also is the beginning of the last week of the semester for Sarah and me, as well as the last week for Sam of outpatient rehab. He's excited. For me, it's bittersweet. He has made insane amounts of progress there, and the therapists have far surpassed what we were hoping for. (And our hopes were high.) The good news is that he is ready to go back to school, and they are ready for him. The plan that was laid out in the meeting left no stone unturned. I am incredibly impressed with the amount of forethought and man hours that were put into this far in advance of him going back. I am confident that he is in the best of hands. We chose to move to Plano because of the school district, and they are taking very good care of our boy. Wildcat Nation, we are grateful for you!

Additionally, the tube did indeed come out on the 28th! Sam is thrilled, we are thrilled, and we move on to the next goal. We have decided that we will use the button covers as tree ornaments this year, because that's just how we roll. Thanks for all of the prayers and encouraging comments that day!

Finally, we are back from our trip, and it was excellent. It was good to be together with relatively little stress. We purposefully did not pack our schedule, although Friday was rather tiring. The concert was incredible. Billy Joel is without a doubt, the consummate entertainer. Jim was saying that he was so tired at the end of the concert. Then he remembered that Billy had been performing all night (including a 4-5 song encore) at the age of 67, so he decided that he wouldn't complain too much. He (Billy) missed very few of our favorites, and it was an amazing show. Here are some pics of our weekend:

Boy bonding at a pit stop







Lunch at Mi Tierra

 Riverwalk-ing

And, concert time!

Finally, quite a while ago in this journey, I'd posted a video of Sam singing She's Always a Woman. We were thrilled when it was a part of the concert. Here is most of the song. Peace, #TeamSam, and thanks for walking this year with us!

11/26 - Sam's Journey - Day 349

We had a very good Thanksgiving with lots of thankful moments.  Here are a some photos from our time together.

    

We had an excellent day together.

There hasn't been too much else going on, but the next 2 weeks will be full of good things. Tomorrow, we get to say goodbye to this awful thing:

Sam is pretty excited. He'll be wearing his favorite button cover, the one with moustaches and top hats on it. We will all be glad to see it go.

On Friday, we're having a meeting about the transition to Plano Senior. The following week is Christmas 2015 in San Antonio. We're still making decisions about lodging, but we'll settle in on that soon.  

After this week of Thanksgiving, I would be remiss if I did not thank all of you. Your ongoing prayers and support are such a gift to us, and we appreciate all you have done. 

11/13 - Sam's Journey - Day 336

Not much to report here. The 11 month mark passed by quietly yesterday with no fanfare. In fairness, most of our Saturdays are like that. Sam's just moving along as he always has. A couple of things of note:

• This morning, we woke up late. When I walked through to the other room, there he was in the doorway, sitting in his wheelchair. He'd gotten himself up, found his glasses and propelled out to the kitchen. "I lost my call button," was the reason. So, yay, independence, and pass the heart medication for Mom, please.
• He's been making the rounds at banks again on the hunt for quarters. It's a Dad/Sam 'thang'. When they go into the bank, it's like when Norm walked into the bar at Cheers. Everyone knows Sam.
• We're still on track to get the tube out on 11/28. Yay! Water intake seems to be getting a little easier.
• Now that we're at the end of our official school work for 2 classes, he's become a procrastinator. He'll get it done, but not without a lot of nagging. 
• Finally, some of you heard about our plumbing woes. Naturally, this all occurred in Sam's new bathroom. It was...unpleasant. (Ankle-deep in ghosts of dinner past is not something I'd wish for any of you, dear readers.) Jim dealt with the majority of it, but it turns out there were/are some significant issues. We have a workable solution, and while it's irritating that the bathroom is not completely working for him, he has a shower, and there are other options for other business. Thanks for all the offers of support and the incredible kindness of one amazing person in particular, (you know who you are!) for getting things going in the right direction!

Other than that, we continue on. Prayer concerns are:

• continued healing for Sam, Aaron, Corey, Ben, Kyle, and all others fighting through their own TBI journeys.
• for Parker Cusey, a football player from Wylie HS. He was injured in a football game, and that injury caused him to have a stroke. He and his family are at the beginning of the journey, although he is making some very good steps in recovery.
• for all of those who are experiencing stress, anxiety or depression, whether they be young people or adults, that there is always a safe place for them to turn. 

This has been a stressful time for a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. Love one another, and take care of each other.

Finally, a picture. It's one you may have seen Jim post on Facebook yesterday. I don't know why, but I went all the way back to the beginning of the blog, despite having about 1.3 million other things I should have been doing. In any case, I was reminded of how incredible this entire trip has been, and that it's nowhere near over. This picture brought a smile to my face, and I hope it does for you as well. Jim's status update with it was, "11 months today...strolling through Hobby Lobby, looking for coin wrappers of course." Peace!

 

10/30 - Sam's Journey - Day 323

We've had another couple of normal weeks at Casa Loeffler. Essentially, this means we're all neck deep in our routines. Sam heads off to rehab every day, Sarah and I go (limp?) off to school, and Jim runs around like a chicken with its head cut off with all of the musical gigs he juggles this time of year. For as crazy as our "normal" gets, it's still preferable to the alternative existence of the last 10+ months. 

Since I'm hoping to keep this brief, (I'll let you recover from your laughing fit...) here are a couple of developments in the continuing saga of Sam.  

First piece of good news: the Keppra is done! There don't appear to be any weird side effects, other than an occasional shiver here and there. We are currently down to ONE medication only--the Baclofen to keep the left arm loose. Well, that and Zyrtec, the number one drug of choice by the locals to fight Texas-sized allergies. 

Second piece of good news: the No Feeding Tube Use Plan has been in full effect for about a month now, and other than having to keep nagging about the water intake, things are good. Thanks for all of the help and suggestions with the applesauce! I got in touch with the gastroenterologist's office and asked when they would like me to set up an appointment since we were several weeks in with no tube. We now have an appointment set up to remove the tube--barring any complications--not for February like originally planned, but for NOVEMBER 28TH! We're just hoping we can find the magic bullet to keep the water intake up to speed.

Other than that, he's been practicing his walking so much at rehab that he keeps breaking the brackets on his leg brace. It stands to reason since it's the original brace he got shortly after leaving inpatient rehab. He's using the stuffing out of that thing, and we're pretty sure he's grown roughly a million inches since the accident, so we're not surprised in the least. This week he was molded for a new brace, and that should be ready in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, he just has to make due with the old one. Luckily, we have a pretty common phrase we use around here: Daddy fix. For the old brace, Jim has now graduated from zip ties and duct tape and moved straight to the wire. We're just hoping it holds until the new one comes in. I'm kind of glad that I got him that cold plastic welding pen for Christmas last year. He might need it!

Thanks so much for your prayers and support! (We are set on paper towels and water for a good long while!)  Please continue to keep Corey, Ben, Kyle and Tyler in your prayers as they progress through their TBI recoveries, as well as an amazing friend who is recovering after donating a kidney. 

I'll leave you with two pictures from yesterday's All Region concert. In the first one, Sarah is in the first position, front row in the mixed choir. The second is of Jim waiting to accompany for the women's choir. Have a great week! (Or however long it is until I write again!)

10/15 - Sam's Journey - Day 308

Another normal week has come and gone, and normal, as it turns out, is really good.  Despite having passed the nine month magical recovery time, Sam continues to tick things off of his "to recover" list. As we hit the 10 month mark and moved into the 300's in days, we realize how very fortunate we have been in so many ways. We are thankful for that, and for all of you for following all of the twists and turns in the path we've been on. Thanks to everyone who sent or brought paper towels and water, and for those who hopped on the meal train! We are grateful!

In the last post, we had a couple of meetings coming up. The first was the visit to the gastroenterologist. We wanted to get his thoughts on getting the tube out permanently. In addition to replacing his current tube, the shelf life of which is significantly shorter than a Twinkie, he said we could start giving everything by mouth for hopefully 2 months straight. Barring significant weight loss, the tube could be out by February. That's great news! We have been completely tube free for a full week now, and it's going pretty well. We have to get going much earlier in the morning. By we, I mean me, since I'm the food person around here, and if you know me at all, you know I loathe mornings. We've been working so hard to keep Sam alive this year that we don't want to lose all of that hard work by having Jim step into the capacity of chef. We've even managed to figure out how to get him his meds orally. The trick is applesauce. Sam's preference is strawberry applesauce, but since they only make those in individual cups, we're probably going to make the switch to plain old apple-flavored soon. For not being able to taste anything since he's been eating, he's pretty insistent on strawberry flavored everything--yogurt, oatmeal, ice cream, you name it. If they make it in strawberry, he wants it. He's always been that way, though. Given the choice between that or chocolate, he always goes for strawberry. This is a huge aberration in the family, and for a while we thought they might have switched babies on us when he was born. We've settled in on it being a super recessive gene. While we're on the subject of flavors, Sam seems to think that his taste is coming back a little. So far he's been able to differentiate between sweet and salty, and has been able to taste garlic and parmesan. That's good since I can't imagine how hard it is to eat enough when everything you get is mush and it has zero flavor. 

Our other big meeting was about potential school decisions. In addition to reviewing the massive report of all the testing they did--about 50 pages or so--we discussed what he needs extra help with, and where he's headed academically. He's been doing really well with the homebound classes he's taking. In fact, if by the end of this semester he's able to pass English 2, and all signs point to that happening, he will be able to start at Plano Senior in January! Not only that, with a little of creative schedule planning and a lot of hard work on his part, he has every chance to graduate on time. ON TIME. Taking into account the events of the last year, that is nearly unfathomable. But, such has been his entire recovery, so I shouldn't be surprised. He is positively elated about this, and when I told him, he was literally bouncing up and down in his chair he was so excited. For a kid that rarely emotes, it was a welcome sight. He still has a ton of work ahead of him, but there is no question that he will get it done! 

Other than that, it's just the normal craziness around here. Teaching is always busy, and Jim's operating at full-throttle with his regular job, along with the extra accompanying gigs he's doing. Sarah is doing well in school, although her combo AP class is kicking her butt a little bit. During all of this, she has made it into the All-Region choir and has been practicing for the next step on the road to state. We're pretty proud of how she is handling everything, including all of the vexing stuff in the life of a junior. We're also starting to look ahead to the big trip to San Antonio in December. Since my best mode of planning could be qualified as "think about everything that could possibly go wrong and obsess about it", I'm considering our concert seat location (will there be too many steps?) how do we eat (do I drag the Nutribullet with us if we eat out?) and where the heck are we staying? A very good friend has offered her home to stay in, but the five of us can be quite cumbersome, and I'm not sure how to manage the Sam sleeping situation. I'm sure we'll figure it all out, but if anyone has any fabulous ideas, please feel free to share!

The other thing that happened was that I have been in contact with a family whose son was in a four wheeler accident and suffered a brain injury a few weeks ago. They were taken to Medical Center of Plano as Sam was initially, and I went to visit with them there. Not having been there since Christmas day, I was a little nervous about going back. We didn't exactly leave under ideal circumstances, and this was where this all began for us. It was the darkest part of the journey for us, and the one with the most uncertainty. I'm going to go ahead and say it's probably in my top three of least favorite places. Ever. Other than the smell of the place immediately transporting me back to last December, it was actually ok. I also got back to the floor Sam was on and left a note for the nurses, since the last time they saw him it was very bleak. I am so glad I got to meet this family, and I am hopeful that their son Corey can get the great rehab that Sam has been able to receive.

In addition to lifting Sam's continued recovery up in prayer, I'd appreciate it if you could also keep in mind:

• Corey and his whole family, who are currently all at home, but in need of a great facility for continued recovery, and peace as they go through the challenges they now face together.
• Ben, the boy who had the bike accident early in the summer, and his family. He has had a bit of a setback in his own recovery. 
• A very good friend and her family at the unexpected death of her mother-in-law, for peace as they mourn her loss.
• And finally, for my former student, whose laugh and genuine cheerfulness brought joy into my classroom every day she was there, and who was unexpectedly taken from us. Also, for her family, friends, classmates and school community who are reeling from this, that we can all carry with us that light that she had as a constant reminder of what a spectacular human being she was. 

I'll close with a couple of pictures. One is our latest installment of "What's on the Pizza Box?" We love our friend at Papa John's!

And last, but not least, I always bash Sam for his hatred of selfies, but low and behold, guess what he has on his phone! It's not bad for a selfie novice, but I feel compelled to tell you that he does indeed still have a mouth and opens his eyes on a regular basis. Peace, friends!