Year 7 - The Year Noting of Our Strong and Optimistic Jake!

Today marks 7 years since the date of Jake's inline of duty US military accident. I have tried my best today to totally focus on Jake and express the positive learning outcomes of celebrating his life. It was 7 years ago today that I totally lost my son to a very serious accident, where we as parents were told that our son would never make it through the night at one point. Yet then if he did live, that we needed to be prepared for our son to be a vegetative state and the possibility to be totally incapacitated and be placed in a long term nursing care facility. I would never accept that daunting outlook on his life, and that is why I fought like hell to provide him the best traumatic brain injury care and medical care to help rebuild his broken body and his big beautiful brain from his injuries. 

Year seven has brought continued changes through the year even during our global pandemic. Jake still is experiencing noise sensitivity to an extreme that he continues to wear to his Bose noice cancelling and conversation ear buds. He can control the amount of noise levels he is intaking from 1:1 conversations and/or background noise taking place near or around him. He still continues his daily dedicated Army work outs of utilizing his stepper and treadmill for an hour to hour and half works outs, as he feels this is great outlet for stress, pain relief, and empowers him to focus on healthy and wellness choices. These types of workout routines provides Jake a sense of pride and control in his life, and a feeling of accomplishment. 

The photos included in this post are reflective of Jake's enjoyment of his relationship with his kitty cat Princess Bella, his researching on the internet that is improving his daily life skills with managing a simple budget and making purchases for his enjoyment and basic needs, and sharing this small food purchases with his friends and family members. Yet three of his favorite outings are still enjoying our beautiful backyard patio and pool area to aid in his relaxation, and playing ping pong before dinner to round out his day. It is amazing how much a ping pong can really improve one's eye-hand coordination, balance and peripheral vision and provide a good physical workout at the same time. 

Many days life is grand for our Jacob, yet he endures quite a bit of pain from his injuries that have resulted in ongoing arthritic conditions yet he tries his best to remain optimistic. He is on a CBD regiment that helps relieve some of the pain through CBD oils and lotions, and is taking Gabapentin on a regular basis for all the nerve damage pain and from the intense surgeries. Yet I am thinking futuristically we will need to look into a pain medication to help him relieve some of he pain that is so unbearable at times for him that the other remedies do not help. He has also been so adamant that he does not want to take addictive types of RX prescriptions, and we support him, yet the pain is so severe at times, that we need  to guide him with a safe solution. So we are being proactive of working with his medical doctors through our choice healthcare of Honor Health and Mayo to address these current issues and with his brain doctors though Barrow Health.

I know these updates are only coming yearly now, yet this is still a celebration of life to note Jake is here with us and he is still making progress. The changes in his brain development and physical walking development are happening at a slower pass now, yet still occurring as this is to be expected with any individual that has suffered a sever traumatic brain injury and ploy trauma to his entire body. We as a family will take any improvement where we can get it, and celebrate Jake's optimism, hope and progress to live his life.

Thank you for following and celebrating the accomplishments of our Jake.

Be well, be safe and always put family first!