Day 273 - March 14 - Shocking!

So far, it's been a good weekend. Joélle and Connor decided to spend the day together without parents, so they gifted Cherié and I with a few hours to hop on the motorcycles and get out together for a bit. We took off at about 11 this morning and got back just before 4 PM, and got to ride some very picturesque back roads in the area. We only rode about 110 miles, but we had a very good time together doing it. A great big "thank you" to our daughter for stepping up and caring for her brother for us. It was a great blessing.

We got back safely, and spent the evening with the boy watching some TV and chatting away. Tonight something happened that has happened a few times over the last few days - Connor was sitting quietly when he suddenly yelped, startling both Cherié and I out of our seats. When we asked what happened, he told us that he had been shocked badly. We questioned him about it and what he describes is a pain like an extremely painful jolt of electricity running simultaneously down his right arm and right leg. It's very sudden and of short duration, just like getting shocked by electricity.

To grasp this completely, you need to understand that Connor's sense of his body isn't just "nothing". It's not a big emptiness, but rather he says it feels like a great big stuffy blurriness that he can't find any definition in. He can't define his hands or fingers or toes, so he has difficulty visualizing the pathway to move his hand, for example. There's no feedback for him - it's just a great big throbbing fuzziness; like something swollen, as he describes it.

In that background, that he can tell me "a shock just ran down my right arm and my right leg" is really really big, in my opinion. While I don't want him to be in pain, the fact that he could pinpoint where this pain was can only be interpreted as "good". If you ask me, I will tell you that we're excited that Connor is getting these small signs of improvement - as I told him last night, we've been praying that his movement, control, and feeling would be fully restored - and fully restored feeling includes pain. So although in one sense we are sorry to see him hurting, even briefly, in another sense we're excited about the possibilities.

Tonight I feel that I'm supposed to ask you to continue believing and pounding on the door with us. We continue to screw our faith up and believe that we have already received what we ask, and will continue to do so until the day Connor is restored.

God bless y'all.

Eric

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