Finally Said "Yes" to the Dress

It’s been a while, a longer gap than I usually take between updates, but it seemed time to give you a break from our little life of madness. Meanwhile, time marches on and Juliana’s progress continues to be what it is—an unsteady road. As of today she has a cast on her right wrist, a cast on her right foot, a brace on her left foot and a Swedish knee cage on her right knee. She is becoming more plaster than person, more gear than girl, but under all of that armor is a girl we are trying to patch back together. She still battles daily with depression and we already miss the giddy girl who laughed nonsensically during her month in the hospital. I wish I could land on the formula that made her so amiable but the answer lives amongst the question of UFOs and mermaids. 

She is making strides in the right direction physically so we continue to hope that will restore her faith in herself. Although her internal demons do their dance, externally medical science and her relentless team is waging its own war on her injury. The serial casting on her right hand is doing its job of opening up her fingers but we cannot lose sight of the limitations of this process: it is only as good as the follow-through. That is actually the moral of all these stories because where surgeries and therapies end, the daily requirement for the usage of her limbs begins. That is why it is SO important that Juliana be made to do things for herself, in spite of her protests and hatred for it. She used her right hand yesterday to eat her soup and although she eventually grew frustrated with her rusty arm control, we were very excited at her ability to do it at all. It is a work in progress. 

Her right foot appears to be healing nicely since the surgery but the cast is still on so we can only grade her improvement by her mobility which I would give a solid C+.  And in spite of herself, she really is just as impressed by her increasing walking prowess as her therapists. She wears the Swedish knee cage to protect her knee from hyper-extending which would cause another problem to be fixed. So far, so good because her feet and legs are all working together nicely: Not perfectly, but good enough for walking.  Just this week Juli walked 212 feet with a standing walker with very minimal assistance, so they excitedly advanced her to a regular walker. Although that is truly a good thing, Juliana was not happy to use that particular piece of equipment. I tried to tell her that the faster she learns to use it, the faster she can get past it but she wasn’t interested in absorbing that.  Tonight when she spent the evening with her dad at a party she let him know exactly what she felt about the walker. Her replay of the conversation with the therapist over usage of it had us both cracking up with laughter.  (And we understood her speech—the whole thing—on her first attempt which made it even cooler). It will likely take months to master that walking aid but in the meantime her gait is picking up speed. 

But true to form in this injury as one problem gets closer to being solved, another always arises. Now her feet are turning out. ... Sigh. ... We saw this coming, I may have even mentioned it already but it is really noticeable now. The surgeon examined her and gave us some suggestions and now we are working on implementing them. Another curiosity is a random bruise that has appeared for the second time in the same spot at the base of her baclofen pump. The first time we showed the doctor she was interested, but not concerned. Now that it appeared again two weeks later in the same place, the doctor ordered an X-ray "just to be safe."  Hmmm…I will keep you posted on that one. 

And even though her conversation might sound like a poster child for "doom and gloom," her speech is getting more conversational as the number of words she strings together understandably is refreshing. She notices it, too, as she listens to the playback of her talking. When Chris returns tomorrow I am again hoping that he will see there have been improvements, even though they are small. Juliana just really wants him home and has been a bit obsessed about his returning this time. Just before Chris left for France they had been having a rough time getting along. The weekend at the hotel for the wedding had its challenges and they didn’t part on the best of terms and that has bothered her the whole week and she kept asking if I thought he was still mad at her. So this time when Juliana said that she wanted to try on her wedding dress, I agreed to let her. Sarah, Nikki, Cheyenne and I helped Juliana into the gown she would wear to become Juliana Medina.  (Doesn’t THAT sound beautiful ... like a song?) And that is how she looked, and clearly how she felt as she smiled and posed for the pictures. (Those will remain in my personal collection. We wouldn’t want the groom to see her in it before the wedding day now would we?!).  Then Cheyenne tried on the dress at Juliana’s request so she would be able to see it better. They both agreed the dress was a very good choice. 

Tomorrow Chris returns stateside and not a moment too soon. His new single has been released to radio in Norway and Juliana said he better let her hear the finished version “as soon as he gets home."  Looks like someone is practicing for what comes after the wedding dress: Wearing the pants in the family….

READ:  Where it all began, in For Juliana: Almost to the Almost, One Penny at a Time, by Janet Spencer Barnes.