Monday, November 1st - 1035 steps in PM.

Tuesday, November 2d - Last night and today, a man named Wayne stopped in the tbi chat room for support. His wife was hit in her car while leaving work and was in a coma. He had lots of questions so I e-mailed my journal to him. He e-mailed me back and said “it helped me understand a lot”. Went and voted in the evening. They even had someone and a witness come out to our car so I didn’t have to go in.

Friday, November 12th - Chair problems again. While it was being fixed, I was in the manual wheelchair. Had Karens mom wheel me out as she left so I could have a cigarette. Was outside waiting for Karen to shortly arise from her nap and wheel me in when I had the sudden urge to go to the bathroom. I thought I would be able to control/hold it until she came down but was wrong. When she did and I told her about it she said “no problem, “**it happens”. After she cleaned me up I went into the chat room to share my embarrassment and get some support. Someone there was actually jealous of me and said he was so constipated, he wished he could **it his pants. Goes to show you, someone always has it worse than you.

Sunday, November 14th - knelt for 3 minutes in bed and stood straight up in bathroom to stand instead of my usual up to the left by grabbing the bars and then a transfer to the right. Decided to start a new kind of therapy for my right arm. To raise it and stretch it with every cigarette.

Monday, November 15th - Knelt in bed for 5 minutes and started standing for 20 minutes. Tuesday, November 16th - Got our film developed and have some good pictures to add to my journal. Wednesday, November 17th - Restarted on my pulleys to strengthen my right arm, did 500. Up to 5 arm lifts with each cigarette.

Friday, November 19th - Was updating my journal and fell asleep on the keyboard, hope I didn’t accidentally delete something.

Saturday, November 20th - Karen and I went to Quaker Square, a historic downtown shopping center with the Ballinger clubhouse group and with Joni and Friends. They have an x-mas tree festival each year to raise money for charity. Brought back lots of memories because Karen used to work there at the candy store.

Sunday, November 21st - Nu step - 750 steps in 20 min. Focus on quality instead of quantity is producing quantity.

Tuesday, November 23d - 1005 steps in 36 min. 30 sec. - almost all were quality.

Wednesday, November 24th - first day I did the nu-step 3 times. Did 1000 steps each time also. 10 AM, 3 PM and 9 PM, 32 minutes, 34 ½ minutes and 38 minutes respectively.

Thursday, November 25th - THANKSGIVING - And do I have a lot to be thankful for 1)Karen, 2)Family, 3)finding God through Jesus Christ, 4)my tremendous progress at rehabilitation. I Even gave grace at dinner. Went to my mom’s with my family and saw my aunt and uncle there. Uncle Bill and I caught each other up on ourselves. Bill, my dad’s only brother, has recently been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and had to quit working, at the young age of around 75. He was the chief of OBGYN at Akron General Hospital and was on their board of directors. What I thought ,but didn’t have the guts to say was, and THANK YOU for simply being able to go to the bathroom and walk (hopefully). Friday, November 26th - Decided today to grow my beard back. I had one for the last 10 or so years but they shaved it off in the hospital. One more step on my return to normal, or, as close to my “normal” as I can/should get.

Sunday, November 28th - Interesting discussion at bible study. End result was an agreement that God was our partner yet we should also be its students.

Monday, November 29th - I insisted that Karen either get me a new patch to replace the torn one or that she get me a new black contact for my right eye to replace the lost one. She was stalling on the patch because she had to go to the eye doctors to get one. She was stalling on the new one because they were so expensive, being unique. It was affecting my balance and ultimately by ability to walk. At some point the tbi’er has to take responsibility for themselves and not just be reliant upon caregivers..

Tuesday, November 30th - Board of Directors meeting at Ballinger Club House tonight. Everyone was there and we /they signed the paperwork to make us our own non-profit Corporation. Which paperwork was , by the way, prepared by my “successor” at the law firm by my request.. I also wanted to correct one error in my journal. I had been a Partner at the law firm for several years. One of the reasons I was in leadership Akron was I was just made a Shareholder of the firm, at the very top. Now, after they correct a couple typos and mail it in, it is just a matter of time until Ballinger Club House is a tax-exempt organization. This should free up contributions and make us more financially feasible. 1st time I was actually at the clubhouse. A couple of the directors sons are tenants in the apartment complex and survivors. We have the party room for the whole complex, rented to us. It is pretty cool too. Like a big living and dining room combined into one. Can’t wait to start using it for the clubhouse. Before the meeting was over and we left, I found out that one of the guys had just had a computer set up by his friend but was having trouble working it. Because he lived there, I offered to help and we went to his apartment and spent about a half hour going over some basics with him, like e-mail, which he did learn because we now have corresponded on-line. I also discovered that we had some similar music likeable too . It was very rewarding to me to be able to help him. No Rotary on Tuesdays anymore. They voted to change the meeting day to 7a.m., not me though, I probably will have to quit due to not having a ride, among other things. I will have to call Terry and talk to him about taking me to Akron Rotary again. Don’t know if I have talked about this before but it is important, so here goes. Rotary has become one of my “links” to the past. I used to be Treasurer of Akron Rotary. One of my fellow board members did not want to see me drop out so he very kindly arranged for me to belong to the local club and I started to go to meetings every Tuesday like I had for the last 10 or so years. One of my fellow members at the new club and a lunch partner was a tbi’er from many years ago, Mel Ballinger. He passed away recently, God bless him. He also had the idea for a “clubhouse” for TBI’ers, hence Ballinger Club House which, among other things, runs this website. One of the lunch programs last year was Ray Tenney, a fellow tbi’er. Ray talked about, among other things, his success at water therapy which led him to walking after many years on his back. Ray is a little younger than me but the way he described the therapy it sounded like something I may be able to do. Coincidentally, they had recently stopped my physical therapy due to my reaching a “plateau” so I was interested enough to mention it to Karen who was also interested and we checked out the water therapy offered by my last place and it appeared inadequate to handle someone as big as me. After checking it out we found out that Edwin Shaw was the only place close enough with a lift to put me in and out of the water. We decided to check out Edwin Shaw and ended up going there for therapy at about the time I was starting this journal. I should also give Ray credit for my involvement with a support group run by our church the “Chapel” . Karen wanted to go check it out shortly after the above and when she asked me and I hesitated, she said Ray Tenney was involved and that was enough to get me to go to the support group meeting, which I still go to. THANK YOU KAREN, MEL , RAY, ROTARY AND THE CHAPEL. Of course, as you can see, it was Karen and Rotary that put it/us all together. Wednesday, December 1st - Tinnitus Retraining was what the chatter ( “Loving A Lie” was their nickname) was talking about tonight. It was a new form of therapy they were doing and were very excited about it. I will have to check it out. Also, a gentleman came into chat who had recently (several months) had his TBI and was really complaining about the drop in IQ. He was wondering how/if he was going to continue his job. I told him that he was in the top 7%. That my research showed that 93% of people in a coma for more than 30 days, like him and I had been, either died or ended up seriously disabled. He realized that he was very lucky and remarked so.