All the Sun For You

A mom, two boys, a husband, and a whole lot of adventure!

Category Archives: Marathons for Sammy


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He’s Home!

Sammy went home yesterday!  After 4.5 weeks of a coma, then “emerging,” and then in-patient therapy here in DSM, he went home.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  I heard doctors tell us not to get our hopes up, not to expect rapid recovery, to keep expectations low.

When this all happened, the doctors told Uncle D that Sam would be in a coma anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months.  I saw Uncle D yesterday as we loaded his car with all of Sam’s things, and he said, “can you believe this?  It’s like a movie ending.  Not even 5 weeks ago I was told that my son would probably need 8 weeks to wake up, and right now, he’s being discharged.  I thought to myself back then, ‘I can wait 60 days to see my son’s eyes again,’ but here we are.  And when this all happened, I was told to not hope for much, and all I hoped for was for my son to be able to communicate with me again, in some way, even if it was minimal for the rest of his life.”

WOW.

As Hottie and I walked back to our car, I cried.  I cried because as hopeful as I was (I NEVER thought for a minute that Sammy wouldn’t fully recover), I did not expect to be sending him home so soon.  I was ready for 8 weeks of “sleeping.”  I was ready for lots of in-patient therapy (we were told “months”).  I was ready for a very long road.  I wasn’t ready for such a quick turn-around, and neither were his therapists.  As we said our goodbyes in Sam’s room, I asked one of his therapists, “is this normal?”  She said no.  She said that everyone is stunned by how quickly he recovered and that, “his young age is on his side.”

Sam truly is… amazing!  He defied every single odd when it came to coming down with FES in the first place, and he defied all the odds in his lightning-fast recovery.  My cousin posted on FB, “Can everyone please say, ‘BEST CASE SCENARIO?'”  But this is better than the best case scenario.  Although there is work to be done to get all of Sam’s functions “back to normal,” the  best case scenario told us months before we’d see much improvement at all, and that the road would be very long.  All things considered, the road has been quite short so far, and the road ahead will be much more pleasant than we were told it would be.

My Marathons for Sammy is complete – he’s home!  I am finishing out this week and I owe him 0.3 miles to complete 4 marathons for him (why I didn’t finish those this morning… ugh!  I had no idea!).  I ran 104.8 miles in the time it took him to recover.  I’m so glad he cut this challenge short for me  🙂

 

 


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Week One is DONE – And an Update!

I finished up my first week of “Marathons for Sammy” on Friday.  It was a good week – not GREAT – but definitely good!  Stats are there if you care at all  😉

In case you’re wondering, Sam is doing GREAT!  We got devastating news a week ago this past Friday (docs said he’d never wake up) but then Sammy started kicking it into overdrive.  HE IS AWAKE!  Even better, he is starting to stand for longer and longer every day (up to 3 minutes, 45 seconds yesterday), moves his arms and legs and head etc., SMILES, laughs, talks, and can eat anything he wants now!  My aunt keep reminding everyone that he is far from healed and has a long road ahead of him, but all that matters to me is that he is on the road!

It sounds like they will likely be moving Sam to my fair city for rehabilitation.  This is great news for SK and me, and my other cousins and second cousins and aunt and uncle who live here.  It is further away from home for my Aunt K and Uncle D, so that’s tough.  But I think my aunt is looking forward to being closer to so much family.  SK has decided to skip her NYC internship and stay with us longer – which we are very excited about!  Her internship here is letting her stay on as long as she wants and she wants to stay close to Sam until she has to go back to school (only 45 minutes from here).

So – things are good!  But you know, I always thought he’d wake up and recover.  I honestly am not surprised.  When I got the call a week ago that he would never wake up, I was DEVASTATED and in total shock and disbelief.  I’ve just always thought he needed time to recover and get back to his life.  He’s doing that!


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Marathons for Sammy

In one of my aunt’s posts on Caring Bridge about Sam, she wrote about his recovery being like a marathon:

“Now, to further explain what the word “recover” means. Again, we have no way of knowing what the extent of his recovery will be. This is going to be a long-haul — doctors have referred to it as “a marathon”. We could see little improvement, a complete recovery, or somewhere in-between. Like we keep saying, we just don’t know, and won’t know until Sam wakes up.”

I’ve been struggling to come up with a new fitness plan for myself, and I really want to do more cross training.  I need to get into the garage to kick the bag and do some INSA.NITY, but I really, really enjoy running.  I’m thinking of running as much as I can in the mornings and evenings, and doing garage workouts a couple of days a week during nap time (they both still nap at the same time, but I think that’s coming to an end this summer…).  When I read the above about Sam, I knew right away what my next self-imposed fitness challenge would be.

Until Sammy wakes up, I will run as many “marathons” as I can, meaning keep count of each and every run and start a new set every time I compile 26.2 miles.  I tend to just think of him while I run, so why not run for him?

So far, I’ve logged 13.03 miles:

Tues, 06/02/15    5.24 miles

Wed, 06/03/15    3.03 miles (fastest ever, I might add!)

Thur, 06/04/15   4.76 miles

These are much shorter distances than I’m used to, but I like them quite a bit and I’m not training for anything right now (I did NOT run that half marathon on Saturday, which was a blessing since I had to drive 4.5 hours to Sam at 3:00 that afternoon).  My goal is to log at least one cross training and also one strength session a week.

I’ll log everything here, and I’m starting on Saturday (but will include the miles already accumulated in marathon #1)