Just a quick post to wish you all Merry Christmas.  Monica’s family has begun to descend on us already with brother Simon and his wife Alexis and two kids arriving yesterday.  I am looking forward to enjoying the festive season where my rehab and my health are not the centre of attention.  I’m looking forward to focusing on the kids and enjoying their smiles and laughter over the next few weeks as we no doubt shower them with far too many gifts!

I am also looking forward to beginning a new year.  This one has brought a little too much bad luck!  My accident was bad enough and then our awesome dog Charli passed away last week.  I had a dream to walk again with her and it breaks my heart that I can’t do that.  I know that when I walk again no matter how far it is that she will be walking with me, looking up at me, stopping at every second tree to relieve herself, and of course seeking out food wherever it may be.

Whatever you have planned for the festive season all the best, keep well, and be safe.

Cheers,

Mike.

Back in the pool today for another go at scuba – Mike had clearly been devising ways to conquer the fact that he cannot get enough movement in his arms or hands to balance! We popped on some flippers and off he went – Bruce (dad) would be proud – 10 laps! The scuba observer and I couldn’t stop laughing at how bored we were getting of the ‘black line’. I had to keep apologising and reminding him that Mike had been quite a handy swimmer pre-accident with interminable hours following the black line. Look out boys – he has the bike, now he can do a couple of laps of the pool (Ok, he needs fins, a $5,000 scuba mask and an observer so he doesn’t drown) …… what can we put in place of the run leg? I must get on to the guys at SuperSprint to see what the rules are – maybe he can target a Brooks kids fun triathlon before the end of summer and just pull out after the ride! Oh boy – I hope he doesn’t read this and get any stupid ideas!!! Do they do a 200m swim, 200m ride biathlon anywhere???

I started writing this post on Monday night but unfortunately it now takes a very sad turn:

In Loving Memory of Charli “Velvet Ears” Forbes

Those of you that know us and the blue house will be devastated to know that we have lost our most precious and loved Charli last night. We thought she had eaten something bad from the bin and dropped her off for some x-rays and a quick operation to check for blockage. A call a few hours later confirmed no blockage but that she was lethargic and not eating b/c she was she had a massive tumour in her bowel. We had discussed this and her prognosis and had agreed to wake her up and give chemo in an attempt to give her 2-3 weeks where she could get the love and attention she was so used to before Mike’s accident, however, she made the decision for us and her heart failed before she could be woken. We are absolutely devastated to lose truly our best friend – particularly as we did not get to say goodbye. Charli has been our best mate since the first day we saw her 6.5 years ago. She loved everyone in her “pack” unconditionally and I feel awful that the last 5.5 months of her life have not been what she or we would have wanted. Who would have thought that we would not be able to make it up to her.

Our only consolation is that she was well and loved her life right up until 2 days before she died. We wish we could have brought her home and ensured that she knew how truly treasured she was but I have to believe that she chose to go because she knew we would be OK. We can honestly say that until June she truly had a fantastic life and she lived and loved every single minute of every day to the fullest. SHe must have known she would only have a short life b/c everyone who knew her will attest to the fact that she did everything at full speed and full intensity and we have so many wonderful memories that will remain with us forever. I honestly believed she was so full of life and energy that she would live for-ever! Thankyou to everyone who has helped us with walking and feeding and loving Charli over the last 5.5 months – you have made her a very happy dog!

Talking to Mike over the last two days revealed lots is happening. Mon is busier than ever! Thursday saw the final fitting for Mike’s recumbent and what a thrill he had to find that the modifications enabled him to work the brakes and gears. His legs growing stronger can pedal the machine — not far yet but he is confident about them.

Mon is driving a hired vehicle now taking the pain out of waiting for maxi taxis that fail to arrive. Mike says that he will still be in Talbot for a while waiting for the paperwork that is required to ensure his ongoing care. He went home on Thursday night as he had no therapy to stay for on Friday. I have just finished reading ‘Walk with Me’ by Kevin Hitchcock, injured in 1991, sustaining a similar injury — C3-C4 vertebrae (one higher than Mike’s). It was such a parallel journey, where he writes of the importance of the devoted love provided by his family and friends that helped him through the toughest of times.

Moni’s tireless efforts for Mike, along with their supporting friends have played this enormous role for Mike. He has a long way to go but he has climbed many rungs of this interminable ladder and has been able to sustain a determined and positive attitude through it all. Mike’s acceptance, with grace, of what has happened, has played a large role in his ability to take joy from even the smallest of improvements in his condition. I have watched him work with his paralysed arms, hands and wrists with enduring patience, devising a way to conquer a task or part of it, on the way to greater independence. He allows himself to dream of what he will do in the future but has been careful not to let this take him into the land of wishful thinking.

As I read of the cases where people have made remarkable recoveries, one of the questionable elements is the role positive or negative that drugs play. Mike has been determined to limit his intake of drugs as he is convinced taking the pain also masks the feeling that he needs to regenerate the pathway to the brain. Most of the time he takes none but sometimes he has a short term run with anti-inflammatories and sometimes he has night medicine for spasms. I have no doubt the many sessions Mike has had from therapists — reflexologists, kinaesiologists, cranial-sacral and Feldenkrais — have played a huge role in helping him reach the degree of recovery he has made so far. As well, Mon’s determination to apply stretching exercises for him each day, have helped reduce the stiffness associated with the spasticity and immobility of Mike’s situation. Holistic medicine has much to offer.

My kindest regards for all that you do and the very best for Christmas/New Year

Lesley (Mike’s Mum)

After our many maxi-taxi disasters we decided that hiring a car was definitely the way to go. We had a couple of busy weekends and lots to do so it seemed eminently sensible. After moving earth and heaven, and ensuring that all the stars were aligned, Ash and I managed to be at Boronia to pick up the car, then back to Talbot in time to get us to an auction at 1:30pm – unfortunately the car then decided to not start! Long story short- sitting in the sun for 1.5 hours for the folks at RACV to send out a roadside assist person (who had to come from Reservoir!!!). He arrived to announce that the battery was flat so we needed to call the RACV battery guy and get him to come out – nice work RACV _ NOT! They definitely win the award for worst ever customer service! Mike was very philosophical noting that we shouldn’t really get too agitated as we were in fact – living the dream – who wouldn’t want to be doing what we were!!
This saying is taken from one widely used in Talbot as the lads ask each other how they are going – clearly they are all “livin’ the dream!”.

Anyway, enough whinging – with its new battery, the car was fantastic and we very sadly have to give it back today and rely on maxi cabs over Christmas! Boo Hoo!!

Mike started scuba last week which was brilliant. They managed to get the weight belts going so that he could float suspended in the water on his stomach. The guys were wonderful and we are hoping that Mike gets good enough to be able to join them at Rickets later this summer.

In other VERY exciting news, you can all thank Mike for the rain over the weekend. He picked up the GT5 trike on Thursday afternoon. Amazingly he can ride it!!! He went for a spin around the carpark and could pedal (not very pretty but effective), steer and brake. He is trying to convince the powers that be at Talbot that the bike has wheels and a seat therefore it is a wheelchair and that it would be discrimination if he can’t use his leg-powered wheelchair when others can use wheelchairs powered by their arms – not sure how he will go, it is a little bigger than your standard wheelchair!

In other news, couldn’t reach agreement as to the best outpatient physio option so we are not leaving Talbot tomorrow. Most things are in place so thankyou to everyone for all the hard work. We are now targetting 21 January at the latest as long as appropriate physio and hydro is worked out (otherwise who knows when we will go!). Will keep you posted. That said, we will be home for lots of time over Christmas so please feel free to drop in.

Finally, a massive thanks to our ‘man-power’ over the weekend. The lovely Tim came over with his trailer to take away the old bed (yes, that means the new one arrived) and some other ‘stuff’ to storage. Thanks heaps Tim! Also, to Jack who helped us load up the trailer and who cleaned my kitchen while hanging out with Mike while Ash and I went to a party.

Thanks to the Wiggles for the fantastic seats – we had bought tickets but obviously couldn’t use the ones we had so we managed to swap them for some great seats right in front of stage (a bit further back than ours but great none-the-less). Ash had a fantastic time and we are officially groupies after going on both Saturday and Sunday! Thank goodness it was raining or Mike would have been riding his bike down along the Yarra instead of coming inside!

Keep posted for news in January of Mike’s goal to ride the Boulevard! He has a goal of riding part of the Boulevard with Campbell when he gets back from leave before we scoot out of Talbot!

Well, this is a second attempt at a post that I managed to destroy yesterday morning prior to getting it published. Unfortunate really because it was very well constructed and incredibly witty! Ha, ha. Will do my best for this one.

Clearly everyone at Talbot is very keen to see the back of us as lots and lots of wheels are in motion to make sure we are out on the 16th December. A massive thankyou to everyone who is working so hard at a very busy time of year to see if this can happen. Had the guys from TAC out yesterday to look at the phase 1 home mods (just enough to get MIke home safely) – secretly I am sure that it is their fault that I stuffed up the post as I was desperately trying to get the house tidy and obviously was quite distracted! Seemed to go well but will get the final details in a week or so.

Lots and lots of other things that have to be done before the 16th – clearly Mike did not want me to rest and relax a bit after the NZ conference (oh yeah, still no inspiring quotes from the conference yet … I will get on to that!)! A really busy week for us next week with lots of decisions to be made – there is some feeling that Mike would be better served as an inpatient at a private clinic in Ivanhoe so we need to get out to have a look at that — this would be made a bit easier if they would actually call us back! This is definitely not MIke’s preference but if they offer amazing facilities and programs we would be crazy to do anything else. Other than that – any of you that have kept an eye on the projects page would be aware that Project Walk is an intensive exercise-based rehab facility that we have been trying to get to. They accepted Mike yesterday morning! Very exciting but lots to do to make that happen. As you can see – lots of decisions need to be sorted in the next week so please excuse my short posts and any ramblings! We are looking at going mid-Jan for 2 months but obviously need to ensure that this is the best way to spend that time for Mike’s overall recovery.

If we do leave Talbot, we are going to have to work out how to handle the “walk off” that Mike is having with another patient. Both the boys are adamant that they will walk out of there and had planned a ‘walk off’ at their discharge dates in Feb. The plan was for the boys to be stood at the door and for them to walk as far as they could until they fell – a line would be drawn at the furthest body-point from the door. For a couple of weeks now Mike has been doing a bit of standing and all was looking OK. As you would all know, I would normally back Mike unconditionally (well, unless I thought the other person was going to win or if he was being annoying!) but a couple of things happened this week that are making me doubt Mike’s ability to win this one ….
a) we found out that Irwin has full feeling in his legs. Obviously this is cheating! The advantage of this was highlighted earlier this week when Mike’s foot slipped from under him and the first he knew of it was when his head rammed in to the physio’s shoulder, just slightly before he piffed himself face-first on to the floor. No damage other than a bit of injured pride, a busted toe-nail and some grazed knees! Was funny in the gym though, apparently when he first fell there was deafening silence but once everyone established he was OK, the call of “serves you right, you smart arxx” was made by the other guys!
b) Mike’s shoulders are very frozen meaning he has very limited reach. Irwin on the other hand appears to have one good shoulder that he can get over his head so as long as he can move this while he falls then he has a good extra half-metre of reach! Anyway, I will be sure to let you know the walk-off dates and will take photos for inclusion!

Just quickly on to the rest: Don’t forget that there is a Kids in the Kitchen tupperware party at the blue house on Saturday. We will kick off about 3pm. Can you please let Jacquie know at info@jactwentyone.com.au – just so that she can make sure that the kids get their little present. If you need anything for christmas and you can’t get here, just let Jacquie know.

In other exciting news, the Michaelforbes.org cycle kit design is complete and in production. We expect the kit to be ready early in the new year. It looks fabulous! A massive thankyou to Jules for doing such an amazing job! and obviously thankyou to all the sponsors who participated in the initiative. The kit will be worn by the folks doing the charity ride in mid-January (more details of that to follow in a later post) and will be available for sale at a few bike shops around Melbourne and via the website. I will get a few pictures of the sample kit up for you to have a look at. It will be very reasonably priced and an awesome summer riding kit so don’t spend all your money at Christmas!!!

While on the thankyou’s - so many to go around — we love where we live! Daina and Jack who look after Ash and help us out so often, Michelle and Cam who hopefully this weekend are moving even closer for making sure I have a clean house and food!, Maria and Dean (a few houses up the street) who are busy working tirelessly on their own place and looking after their 3 kids who took time out on the weekend to come down and lay some turf in the little bare patch out the front and also around the cubby out the back and who then went to the butchers for me so we can eat! Danny and Adam for the massage that they do pretty much each week so that I can have an early-ish night or two to try to give Ash a semi-normal bed-time. And finally (but definitely not least) to the wonderful Kent. Not sure if I have mentioned tumblin’ monkeys in previous posts but Mike needs to play games to try to help encourage hand and shoulder function and Ash loves tumblin’ monkeys. I have been looking everywhere to try to get one but it is quite scarce! Anyway, we mentioned this at the cycling to Kent and the following Monday there was an e-mail saying it was sorted! He came over last weekend and dropped off tumblin’ monkeys and a talking Elmo doll – Ash is in heaven! There has been many a tumblin monkey tournament in the past week – although Ash has a slightly different take on the winner — she is convinced it is the person with the most (not the least) monkeys – oh well, it does say 5+ on the box and isn’t cheating a sign of intelligence?????

Finally, another somewhat amusing story from the week. As per previous posts, Mike now goes to singing with a couple of the other guys on Tuesday night. Ash loves it and insisted that we join in - let me assure you it is terrible! We are thinking that we should get the ABC guy who did choir of hard knocks out to Talbot and the guys are suggesting a change of name from the Spice Wheels to the Choir of Bad Breaks but we are worried this might be in bad taste!

Crazy busy weekend this weekend. See some of you at the Tupperware thingy on Saturday afternoon, feel free to swing by then or later as Mike is home (and may need boy help to not have to suffer thru tupperware stuff) and no doubt this will roll in to an early BBQ for dinner. We are busy most of Sunday.

I had been gone for less than 24 hours when I spoke to Mike on Wednesday afternoon and he had met with TAC and was getting sorted for a mid-December discharge. Apparently this followed a meeting with a private re-hab clinic in Ivanhoe earlier in the day! I thought I was going to get a rest when I got home from NZ – apparently I have been very, very wicked (as they say no rest for the wicked!).

The private clinic is interesting as they didn’t want a bar of Mike when I rang 3 months ago and begged them to take him but now the Prof at Talbot has put in a query we get a different response. Will followup more. Mike very keen to be an “out” patient as opposed to an inpatient and Ivanhoe is further from home but will check out the program and facilities – if it looks good then off he will go!

The land of the long white cloud (and cold temperatures and biting wind) was good. Didn’t really get out much but the conference was excellent – nice to see that there is research going on all the time and all over the world and that they are making good progress. Hoping that the recommendations from Canadian research about early surgical intervention and also the vocational work from NZ on early community integration get picked up here quite quickly. Also got a chance to do lots of reading while I was there so feeling highly motivated, very well informed and all a bit clever really …… well except for the surgical talk over b’fast that I nearly lost and all of the research papers that used words and acronyms that I need to go back to uni to understand!

Have lots of highly inspiring, humbling and interesting quotes that will have to go in the next post as it appears that I will  be late in for MIke’s appointment this morning unless I stop rambling shortly!

Another fantastic and very busy weekend at the blue house with Mike’s sister and parents down – lots of kids playing, lots of great food and plenty of relaxing for me which was great. Mike had lots of good therapy sessions too which was awesome. Although, we might have tired him out – I popped him on the trampoline for some stretching but by the time I went inside to grab something Mike was fast asleep! Anyway, he had a lovely alfresco nap which can only be good for the soul! And for the record, when we put Mike on the tramp, we lie him down and do some stretches and move his back around to release it — he is not up doing supported jumping!

Enough, lots more to say but will try again for another post tomorrow.

Really glad to hear that Will is doing well, can’t wait to see him on his visit back to catch up on his news – we keep using him as an example of how fit and well you can get to some of the new para’s in at Talbot (so I  hope that is OK! …. you better be looking great when you come in Will!).

Thanks to Jules who is doing an amazing job (made harder by my e-mail dramas, inability to make a decision or have all the right pieces of paper with me at the same time) with the cycling kit. She clearly needs some sort of medal (or a free entry to mental asylum for working with me!!) Kit goes off for production this week, very exciting!! I can’t wait to get some pics of it up on the site — maybe you can all get it as a new years present instead of a christmas one!