As all is well, this is the "final post".

Wiley and I just got back from Dr. Eichbaums Office, where his CT showes that he continues to heal and mend. In fact no further CT's are even scheduled. Just a follow up visit in 2 months time. Unimaginable, no doctor visits for 2 months!

Thank you again to everyone who supported our family, whether it was in a tangible way through food, logistics, time or the lending of your particular expertise. Or through the offering of your thoughts and prayers. I believe that they all made THE difference in Wiley's recovery.

We are forever changed by this experience.

He is one lucky kid and we are one lucky family.

Blessings,
Nancy, Tim and Wiley

Everyday stuff is, sometimes, a fabulous thing

On Monday, Wiley’s first full day as a high school freshman, he got back his first test grade since his return to school. Drumroll. It was algebra. Sharp intake of breath. Hold.

An A-. An A-!

On an algebra test. You can bet his parents were pretty happy when he gave them that news.

I’d say he’s pretty well caught up with that class.

Nancy said he came home from school all smiles on Monday. I bet he feels kind of like he’s got his life back, and he's pretty happy about it. (He has, overall, been enormously sunny of mood and charming in his recovery. In fact, Nancy said she was kind of reassured when he got annoyed by her prodding about when he’d work on his soon-due 5-paragraph essay. He is, after all, 14, nearly 15, and a little surliness is to be expected!)

Wiley’s on track to perform a few pieces with his school (ArtQuest) orchestra in their first performance, coming up October 2^nd, in the evening. He’ll be playing standup bass. (If you are interested in tickets, give her a call or drop her an e-mail; she’d be glad to arrange that for you.)

Not much else is newsworthy, really. Which is, in and of itself, of course, newsworthy.

As Wiley’s trajectory has started to rejoin with the daily life of nearly any boy his age, the whole drive for the blog has also started to fade into my own rejoined daily life and that of his family. It has become more sporadic, I’m sure you’ve noticed, as the news is more and more simply normal life. At Nancy’s suggestion, I’ll plan on one more blog entry for Wiley, after he sees his neurosurgeon this Friday. After that, I think we can all become part of giving Wiley his own life back. He can once again become his own publicist (I told him I had been fulfilling that role these last weeks), select by himself what becomes public, who gets to hear what. Return to being a 14-, nearly 15-, year old kid. Who just happens to be really tall and have a really, really big scar on his head.

And who has a heck of a lot of people just thankful that he’s around.

by popular demand...

Here is a picture of the three of us. This is the one we put on a thank you card and dropped by along with home-made choclate chip cookies to the Critical Care Unit, the Truma Ward and the ST/PT and OT departments at Memorial Hospital to thank them for taking such good care of our boy.

Who is that small person?

Off to LA to celebrate Tim...

Did you see that streak go by?

Wy-man is bumping up to full-time at school... on Monday!

He did a couple of short days at school this week, and the next thing I knew, Nancy was talking to the speech therapist about when he could be there full-time. Because he really wanted to be. While going back to school was a little tough, being the one that left early kept him a bit out of the usual daily experience of all his pals, and really didn't seem necessary -- to him. Nancy talked to the counselor at the school, who gently probed "Who wants this to happen?" because he wanted to make sure it wasn't Wiley's parents pushing for him to be back so soon. "HE does!"

Within another hour or so, Nancy panicked, wondering whether this was really the right decision. She called Kay, Wiley's speech therapist while he was in the hospital. "Is this a bad idea? Is it too soon? Should I make him wait?" "Nancy," said Kay, understanding the real nature of the anxiety, "You can't break him. He'll be ok."

So, Wiley's back in school, soon to be full-time. The first day, not all of his teachers knew his circumstance. (Information system failure.) His algebra teacher, in fact, informed him that he was going to get a D- because he had missed so much school. (I guess she somehow managed to overlook the major scar on his head.) A couple more days, and things are mostly getting sorted out. He's dropped Spanish for this year, and he can't blow a tuba until January, so orchestra class will have to be satisfied with standup bass playing by Wiley for awhile. He's meantime working away on his own time, too, striving to make up for lost time with some outside help from his private bass teacher. "But," he says, "that Bach concerto is really hard."

Wiley can see best on his left side, because his left eye has a hard time tracking to the right. So you mostly see that side of his face when he talks to you, and he needs to sit on the right side of the classroom to follow what's going on at the front. (Of course, since he started school late, and kids seem to get locked into their seats, he doesn't have a lot of choice about where he's ended up sitting. It's not always in the best spot.) His eye doctor does think that the vision issues will clear up, and if they don't, surgery could fix them. His eye issue and the scar are by far, so far, his biggest apparent souvenirs of this wild journey he's taken us all on -- and for that we can all be grateful.

I left him on the steps at 7:55 AM

We nominate neurosurgeon, Eldan Eichbaum, to be named the deity of his choice.

Best night's sleep I've had in a long, long, time.
Nancy

Hi ho, hi ho

...it's off to school he goes.

Six weeks to the day after his accident, Lightning Boy will be headed off to his first day of high school, just a little later start than everyone else. With one heck of a conversation-starter head scar readily visible under the buzz cut he's managed to grow out so far (as you can see in this picture of Wiley and Tim, taken Sunday afternoon just before Tim headed back down to LA for this week's work).

To prep, Wiley's racing gung ho through as much schoolwork as he can to be caught up. He is madly learning Bach's Brandenburg's Concerto no.3 on his bass -- as well as other pieces for Orchestra, but the Bach seems the most daunting. He's also catching up with English class reading (Life of Pi) and essays, completing the last 2 assignments for Algebra that he needs to be up to where the rest of the class is, and, last but not least, consuming World History, on which he has a test his first day(!). He's also been conferring with his lockermate, who rather assumed it would be a semester, at least, of not having to compete for space. Wrong!

This weekend was an especially full one. It luckily started with Tim and bro' Steve making it back from LA Friday night instead of Saturday morning, a welcome reprieve. That provided a good bit of room for Wiley to have friends over on Saturday, catching up with some he hadn't seen since the accident. Sunday, Wiley, Tyler, and Nancy plunged into making an enormous four batches of chocolate chip cookies, so as to be able to bring a treat with the thank you message they are delivering this afternoon to: the ICU where Wy spent 9 days; the Truama/Neuro floor where he had his own "room" and was made as comfortable as possible while awaiting his final surgery -- nearly 3 weeks; and of course the "homies" of rehab who worked with Wy in the hospital and made it possible to get discharged from the hospital to home, instead of an outpatient rehab center.

It's got to be pretty wonderful for all those folks to see a kid go from comatose and having an uncertain prognosis to a kid walking in, saying thank you with cookies he helped make, and telling them that he's headed off to high school tomorrow. Six weeks after he well checked in.

I'm sure it won't be an easy transition, dropping into high school as he is, but I bet he finds his feet pretty quickly. It seems to be his way.

Flyin'

DO read the post before this one if you haven't yet.

I don't know about Tim (as he's off at work in LA), but I would say Nancy is very nearly more wiped out now, after getting Wiley's big school news yesterday, than she was when it looked like Wiley would be at home indefinitely. There's just something in the relief factor of getting a clear answer ("he's gonna be ok") when you've been in holding-your-breath mode for 5.5 weeks straight. Wham. Straight to the gut. Knocks that breath you've been holding right out of you.

Despite his mom's post-traumatic state of shock, Wiley and I got quite a kick out of teasing her about her apparent brain damage when I stopped by yesterday: she couldn't for the moment recall the name of the movie they'd watched the night before. And really, it's only a good thing when your kid who came out of neurosurgery 2 weeks ago is smart-alecky all over again, just like a 14-year old should be. (My role in the tease can only be justified, maybe, by my great pleasure in being able to join Wiley in carrying it out.) Wiley was all smiles, clearly delighted himself.

Here's how the school-next-week news unfolded, more or less. Tuesday morning Wiley had a speech therapy appointment, his first since leaving the hospital. It was specifically intended as an "assessment," and was the one outpatient care service he was signed up for. After hearing nothing from the therapist, Nancy called her up the next day. "Well??? What do you think? When will he be able to go back to school?" "Oh," said the speech therapist, perhaps even a little puzzled, "I don't see any reason why he can't go back to school now." Wham.

Of course, his parents had already made plans -- since he wasn't in school -- to have him reschedule a day's tutoring and go on a little trip. Wiley and Nancy are to fly down to LA the weekend after this one to join Tim for the award-night screening of the short film "Ed Meets his Maker," for which Tim has won a Director of Photography award from the Directors' Guild (!! go, Tim!). They still get to go and all be together for the big night; Nancy and Wiley just won't be driving back on Monday as they had planned. Yes, Wiley got a green light to from the neurosurgeon to hop on a plane and fly.

Why let a little traumatic brain injury keep you earthbound?