Schools and Passports

Progress on the Cabois School is slowly moving forward.  Here is a video by John Engle from Haiti Partners showing how the school looks now.

Rock Climbing in the Jemez Mountains.

We’re also inching forward on Wensons passport. It looks like he will receive his passport within the next few weeks, hopefully by the beginning of October.  Wenson had an appointment to pick it up on September 6th but upon arriving at the passport office, he found out that some of the documentation wasn’t set up correctly and he needed more documentation.  After getting his passport, our next step is to apply for a student visa. Although we don’t know how long that will take, I hope it will be an easier and quicker process because we’re dealing with the US government instead of the Haitian government.  I hope to see Wenson in school in Alaska this fall.

I’m doing well.  I’ve been able to be very active this summer- here is a picture my friend Jason Halladay took of me rock climbing. I wore my teenage leg all summer while I was in New Mexico. As expected, it started out wonderful and comfortable, and slowly got too big. My calf muscles were still shrinking. So, as soon as I came back to Arizona, my prosthetist and I started working on my grown up leg. This one is built similarly to the teenage leg, but hopefully will last me for a few years, not a few months. It’s got a better suspension system, which means that if I hook my toe on something, the leg will stay on and I’ll fall over instead of the leg coming off and landing in who-knows-what I’m walking over. This will also make roller coasters much safer for people below me. (Okay, there aren’t any roller coasters that I know of in Phoenix, but LA isn’t so far away!)

I'm only halfway up the climb, but I finished the hardest part!

I was out hiking once this summer, and used a fallen tree to cross a stream. On the way out, I managed just fine, but on the way back, I had a little more trouble. I got about halfway across, and then caught my toe on a branch. Instead of being able to correct for it and keep going, my leg fell off into the stream! I was still in my teenage leg at this point, and it had already gotten too big for me, so it didn’t stay on very well.

The other major improvement between my grown up leg and my teenage leg is how much I can bend my knee. In the teenage leg, I had about 45 degrees range of motion. I could walk and just fine, but stairs were a challenge, and the knee got in the way while climbing too. Now, I’ve got about 90 degrees. This still isn’t as good as my real leg, but it’s a big improvement. Now I just need to build my quads and hamstrings back up so I can support my body weight at the higher angles.