Thursday Morning

It is Thursday am and Sam just finished is 2nd real good night of sleep. What a gift that is. The nights before that ranged from horrible to lousy. We learned that giving Sam a sleeping pill jazzes him up and keeps him going until 4am. The next night without a pill he slept over 12 hours (I still don’t think that beats Luke’s sleeping record).

Sam has improved greatly over the last 2 days. He has regained a lot of his strength and is able to get around pretty good now. Yesterday I was able to pick him up and lift him without too much pain (pain for Sam that is). That is quite important since things are not very accessible around here. If you were from Lisbon and were in a wheelchair, I believe you would have to move (or hang out by one of the new malls). I don’t believe that it is intentional at all, rather almost everything is old and constructed before wheels were invented (ok that may be a slight exaggeration). There is a lot of cool history here. This country is proud of its heritage of great explorers. They have at least one huge monument dedicated to the explorers and the whole patio that it sits on is a large map of the world complete with dates they their “discovers” landed at different islands and continents.

They have an “oceanarium” here that Sam wants to go to and see the sharks and such. It is located in the EXPO 98 area where the world’s fair was held in 1998. 2 days ago we took Sam to the mall there for his first outing. He wanted KFC to eat. Since Sam can now be lifted, we can take the train over to the ocean (between his anti-biotic IV’s) and do some sightseeing. To access the public trains, we need to climb those stairs that you saw on the pictures last week and go back down them to get to the train station. I am not sure what it is like at the destination, but Luke needs to get his weightlifting in anyway before football camp next week. The ocean sounds really good since it has been and will be 100+ degrees until Monday or Tuesday. No air-conditioning in the hospital rooms... that makes it tough sleeping.

As always, we want to thank you for your prayers and support. It means a lot to us knowing that there are so many people praying an ocean away for Sam. Sam should begin feeling changes in about 3-4 months. Sam was officially number 64 (they only do 4 of these procedures a month) and also officially the youngest person to have had this surgery. Sam’s friend Eric is recovering nicely also. His injury was in his neck. Anyone who has had neck pain knows that it is tough to avoid. He is finally sleeping better also and will be joining us on our ocean trek today. I keep getting emails asking for more pictures so more will be coming shortly.

Thanks again!
Randy, Kris, Luke and Sam.