Day 113: Our Final Full Day in CT

Another night of getting 7+ hours of sleep with a total of 7.5 hours last night. The lower back pain that I have been experiencing wasn’t as bad this morning but was still present when I woke up.

Right as everyone was leaving or getting ready to head to sleep last night my father-in-law had to head to the hospital for a trauma case. He didn’t get home from the hospital until 4:30a so as people started waking up we kept it quiet around the house. 

Once he woke up we had our traditional Belgian waffle breakfast since we had everyone at the house this morning and it was our last full day here. 

After we finished a late breakfast I decided to test the range of motion in my shoulders.  

Without stretching them ahead of time I was able to get approximately 160-170 degrees range of motion in each shoulder! 

I won’t know the exact range until I get back to physical therapy later this week but it is the most range of motion I have had since before my injuries.  

I need to continue working on my external and internal rotation for both my shoulders and elbows but am very happy with how far my arms have come over the past few months. 

It was around 50 degrees out so my father-in-law and I headed out for a walk around the neighborhood. It’s a nice neighborhood since it consists of several hills.  

We ended up walking 4.3 miles in 1.5 hours at a pace of 18.9 minutes/mile.  

We had only planned on going for a short walk but I was thrilled when we got back and I noticed that we had walked 4+ miles. 

That walk made for a total of 4 workouts over the 10 days that we’ve been here. While it is off of my normal routine, I am happy with what I was able to accomplish. 

After getting cleaned up from the walk I took time to pack everything for tomorrow. Fortunately we don’t have an early flight which is unusual for us. Usually we have to be up at 3:00a for a 6:00a flight but tomorrow our flight isn’t until 12:00p. 

As we were sitting around the Christmas tree this afternoon we talked about one of the hardships of this entire journey - knowing that others are watching while I stand there as Laura lifts heavy luggage or other heavy objects, depending on where we are. 

It is something that we experienced when flying out to CT. Laura had to lift the luggage onto the scale when we were checking in. She also had to stand on the edge of the airplane seat to store our bags in the overhead bins. 

While she was doing both of those tasks I had to just stand there and watch, knowing that others were making judgements about why a tall muscular guy was standing there as his petite wife was doing all of the hard work.  

We don’t pay any attention to it or let it bother us but it was something that came up today and a topic that I realized I hadn’t discussed here yet. 

Since tonight was our last night and it had been a long week of cooking, Laura’s parents took all of us out for dinner in Hartford to a delicious restaurant that they had been wanting to try. 

After eating far too much pasta we are back at the house and getting ready to crash before a long day of flying awaits us tomorrow.