Stryker Brigade News

The general asked me how I was holding up. I told him this was our worst fear come true, but that the portion of his brain that controls personality is intact. I also mentioned some personnel actions that may be pending that were of concern to me. After all the hubbub was over Scott got a shower and cleaned himself up. He's still not too happy with the view in the mirror, but there's not much we can do about this right now other than remind him that it will be repaired.

We had another visit from a local representative of the 14th Cavalry Association.and his wife after lunch. They were a very nice couple. The man was a commander at one time of Scott's troop when it was in Germany. He said there were about 20 other members of the association in the area, some of whom were retired generals.

After they left, Scott expressed a desire to visit Majors and Oreo. Scott was a bit tired so he rode in his wheelchair to see Majors. They talked a bit and then Scott wanted to go see Mike Oreo. We got outside his door, checked inside to see if he was up for a visit. The 14th Cavalry Association folks were visiting Mike along with his parents. Scott walked in to see Mike, who got out of his bed quickly to greet Scott. (I keep forgetting that these guys were well disciplined and respond this way to superiors.) They shook hands and talked about how they got hurt and when. Scott got a little disoriented on the way out because of some curtains and bumped into the wall, but no harm as done and we got him back into the chair for the ride back to his room.

Sometime after we returned, two ladies from soldiersangels.org arrived with some nice things for Scott and a lap blanket. They also had some cards for Scott. We made sure they were aware of Majors and Oreo before they left so they could visit them, as well.

Scott and I played cards (Rummy, which is somehow ironic) and watched football on the TV. I'm not used to the game choices one gets on the East Coast or how late the games run. No wonder everybody looks tired on Mondays around here.

Scott scarfed up his dinner, which consisted of diced ham, yams (or sweet potatoes, couldn't tell for sure) and potatoes with gravy. Scott is on what's called a mechanical diet, which means they chop up the meats for him.

After dinner, we watched more football and played Rummy, this time including Julie. Scott held the cards in his right hand and played with his left. He does pretty well in the game. He can't say the names of the cards, but he knows which cards he's playing. He missed one play, but that was because it was hard to see playing on the hospital tray.

Julie left about 7 p.m., but not before remembering that we hadn't done Scott's speech therapy homework. Egad! Scott had to do 45 sentence completion exercises ("You cut things with a ?" and then pick the word/picture and write the word to complete the sentence) and six of those "find the hidden words" puzzles. He did very well, only screwing up the last two sentence completions because he was in a hurry to finish them. I guess I can't blame him since he's right handed and has to write all these words with his left hand. That's got to be tiring. When I left, he was turning his attention to the World Series. I would have watched it with him (I write this because I know someone will ask), but I was pretty drained by 8 p.m. Eastern. We need to get up early tomorrow to get busy on leaving here under our terms.

ST