Olivia's Progress

Olivia is just finishing 2 1/2 weeks of recovery and doing remarkably well. For the past weeks she has never complained of anything - other than boredom - and I am so proud of her. We went to the doctor last Friday and had the stitches removed and new x-rays. He said her feet look terrific. She can now take her boots off at night when she is sleeping, which was great news for her. She also started the process of walking on Monday. She is still very slow and labored at it, but he said within 5-10 days she should be going strong. It just takes time to adjust to the boots, especially where she has two of them to figure out. The first two days she used a walker, but now she just shuffles around and then goes to her wheelchair when she is tired, which is still very quickly. Her greatest joy came when she made it out back to shoot a basketball a couple of times! Of course, there wasn't a lot of form that went into the shot, but she was so excited to be able to get outside and shoot, if it was only one shot.

She has kept busy with many projects. Dave's cousin, DeAnn, was a life saver and came and taught her to crochet each morning when I would take Shaylee and Taite to swim lessons. I don't think words can express my appreciation to her for that small act of kindness. It was a comfort to me to know that if Olivia needed anything, even though I was only going to be gone 1 1/2 hours each time, that someone was there to help her. She is now going to use the crochet skills that she learned to complete a 4-H project. Thanks also goes out to her two little nieces, Elina and Jocelyn, that came and watched Barbie movies one afternoon to keep Olivia busy. And a thank you to Olivia's friend Whitney that shared an entire day with her. I am sure it wasn't the funnest day for Whit, but it sure meant a lot to Olivia that she would come and spend time with her, especially while she really can't do much of anything. She will now be in her boots until August 1st, when we go back to the doctor to check her progress. If all goes as planned, at that point she can ditch the boots and go to braces for the following eight weeks.