Thursday, August 16, 2012

August Update from Brian

Summer is coming to an end and time is flying. I have a pretty busy and exciting August. I am making a return trip to Kennedy-Krieger in Baltimore for a week of therapy and evaluation. It will be good to get another set of eyes on my injury to look at my progress and maybe reassess my recovery attack. It has been about a year and half since I made that trip. My leg fracture caused me to cancel the one I had scheduled in February. My parents are coming along for this trip and I look forward to spending time with them.

We are also scheduled to meet with Dr. Wise Young at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He is considered one of the best spinal cord research doctors in the world and is likely the closest doctor to having treatments that would allow injured people to gain back function. He is in the middle of his trials in China and plans to continue them in the USA in 2013. He has to be careful about what he says until the trials are over to not compromise trials but he has made hints about seeing success in his patients in China. It will be interesting to see what he shares with us and if it could potentially benefit my injury. He spends the majority of his time in China and it just so happens that he will be back in Jersey the week we are in Baltimore and hopefully it works where we can drive three hours to meet with him.

Since I am going to be so close to NYC I am going to head there for the weekend to stay with a few friends before beginning the long drive back to NC. I am making the six hour ride to Raleigh and a few days later the six hour ride to Baltimore with my parents. It is going to be a lot of time in the car. I was initially planning on making this my first flight but I decided I did not want to take the chances with the airline to lose or damage the stim unit I worked pretty hard to get. It is too big to carry-on and I do not want to take the chance of having it damaged, especially not knowing how long it would take and if I could get a replacement. I am a few weeks away from moving into the protocols which have more potential for bigger gains.

I have not shared this with many people but I start taking some on-line graduate classes by the end of the month. I am taking them thru Western Carolina in Project Management. I still have my permanent residence in NC and they are the only in-state public school that offers it on-line. I had to apply and write a few things as well as get my transcript and a few reference letters. The program required you to have a 3.0 your last 60hrs of undergrad which I guess I did or was really close but NC State sent the transcript directly to them. First I will earn a graduate certificate that will also prepare me to take the exam to become a certified Project Manager, which I have been told is a pretty good thing to have on your resume. I am not sure if I will continue to pursue my Master’s with it or not? It is TBD.

I have a pretty busy August but I am excited about it and hope I have some good news to share from my trips. It has already been a challenge to manage my time with work and therapy and adding school to the mix will take it to a new level but in the end will pay off.