Jacob, Two Years Later

I was looking back at my blogging (Mo’ Boy is now over two years old) and I was reading back two years ago. I found this article about Jacob, my youngest son.

I found it to be really interesting, because this morning, I got him up, unhooked him from his CPAP machine and his night feeding pump, changed his clothes and his diaper, set him up in his “Jiggle Jacket” (it’s a vest with a machine that pumps air in and out really fast to loosen the mucus in his lungs), and turned on the Cartoon Network so he’d have something to watch while he jiggled.

Then I took his brother, Brendon, to school.

When I came back, I put on his DAFO’s (little ankle braces) and his Spiderman shoes over them, and his coat. When his preschool bus came, I strapped him into his powered wheelchair and sent him off to school.

This Christmas Day, he’ll be five years old. Next fall, he’ll start kindergarten.

It’s very interesting to see how he’s grown. His little chatterboxing hasn’t stopped. His vocabulary is extensive, even for a “normal” preschooler. He still can’t crawl, and he has trouble still even rolling over. The other day at a church party, I watched him maneuver his powered wheelchair with amazing confidence.

He now gets Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy each twice a week. We’re saving up money to take him to an intensive PT program in Arizona in Feb. There are stories that after a couple of sessions of this program (called “Conductive Education” or “CE”), children often learn to walk. What a dream that would be!

So, it just touched me to think of my own words as I wrote about him two years ago, “He tackles life with a courage born of not knowing he’s not supposed to be able to do things. He takes his sufferings in stride because he’s never known anything different. So after a lesson like that, why do I let myself go on whining about MY life?”

And that’s pretty sharp, considering the self-pitiful moping I’ve been doing for the last couple of days.

So, Here’s to you, Jacob!

MRHK
Mark Hansen
http://markhansenmusic.com/