Hello from Jacksonville to our friends and family and #LionStrong community. In the four weeks since our last update, Ari has been diligently pressing on at the SCI Day Program at Brooks Rehab, working with some amazing therapists six hours a day, five days a week. The learning and figuring-things-out continues full steam ahead. Not every lesson is fun, but not a rough moment in vain. He is steadily increasing his functional independence and it’s wonderful to witness. Don’t you dare help him get in the car, he’s got it, ok? He’s also getting incredibly strong. At this pace we may have to register his upper body with the Department of Defense. Some of us haven’t been to the gym in two months and regretting it big time. Ari's Day Program buddies, some of which were his inpatient buddies, hablan Español primarily, so honing Spanish skills has been an unintended extracurricular at Brooks. On top of the intense therapy schedule, Ari has also managed to get through a semester of hospital homebound school and is a couple of lessons shy of being fully caught up and officially halfway through Junior year. Though we’re thankful for weekends at home, by Sunday morning Ari is eager to get back to Helen’s House to prepare for the week ahead. Ari will be taking the day off tomorrow and then back at it bright and early Thursday morning. 

As of last week’s conference, Ari’s discharge date from the Day Program is January 24th. We are not yet sure what therapy will look like after that. Gainesville is great, but it doesn’t have a Brooks. We are working on getting an RT300 functional electrical stimulation (FES) cycle and some kind of standing device covered by insurance so he can continue those important therapies at home and help keep his muscles engaged and encourage healthy circulation and all the other good things his body and mind enjoy when legs are moving or he is standing upright. 

And speaking of being fully engaged, there’s really no better way to describe this outpatient stage we’ve been in between Thanksgiving and this Hanukkah-Christmas Eve. Ari has been fully engaged in the moment and all it is requiring of him. There is nothing taken for granted. During this same parenthesis, Ari lost a close friend to a freak accident, a friend that everyone in our family considered a friend, a young man of 18 full of life and full of light. Ari was able to make it to a candlelight vigil in our old neighborhood and also to his Celebration of Life service. Not a moment of it was absent a full appreciation of every breath and every drop of life we are given on this planet. With that backdrop over the last few weeks, as Mom and Dad shuffle back and forth in our new relay life, Ari and we are fully, resolutely, looking forward and fully aware that the moment we are living through is consequential. 

The convergence of the coming holidays points us to the Light that shines through the darkness and to the Hope that joy and peace will take residence where there has been gloom and anguish. We can look back already and see how the darkest moments have birthed beautiful things. We have seen glimpses and expect more to come. On behalf of the #LionStrong team, thank you for the light and the hope that each of you has brought us over the past few months, and we wish all of that in abundance for you this season and in the coming year. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year to you all!

Ari’s Family