It’s Saturday night. So we went out.<\/p>\n
Tom slipped into the wheelchair with amazing ease – just one day of rehab did that.<\/p>\n
We signed out and took the elevator to the first floor. No chaperone.<\/p>\n
“This is a DATE, right?” I said, our old joke<\/a>.<\/p>\n I pushed him outside, and showed him the outdoor obstacle course with different kinds of pavement and surfaces. Patients come here to\u00a0test their abilities in chairs, with walkers, with prosthetics.<\/p>\n It looks like fun, in a way.\u00a0A challenge\u00a0to look forward to. Tom does well with missions. He was an Army Ranger.<\/p>\n In the first few days after his stroke, Tom was exerting tremendous effort to get his right side to move even a little.<\/p>\n The physical therapist watched him and said, “Don’t hold your breath!” He was.<\/p>\n Like so many efforts in life, you just have to remember to breathe.<\/p>\n We settled down at the benches overlooking a bit of green space. We admired the flowers and swatted a few mosquitoes. We talked and laughed. And breathed.<\/p>\n He looks so good.<\/p>\n It was the first time Tom had been able to just sit outside, in these 10 days.<\/p>\n First chance to breathe the air outdoors.<\/p>\n I stood behind him for awhile, giving\u00a0him Reiki in two hand positions on his head.<\/p>\n I could feel the thick area in\u00a0his brain. I directed\u00a0the energy flow there.<\/p>\n He relaxed in the chair. He was ready for bed.<\/p>\n Breathe.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2000. That’s the year I met Tom and the year I learned Reiki.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s Saturday night. So we went out. Tom slipped into the wheelchair with amazing ease – just one day of rehab did that. We signed out and took the elevator to the first floor. No chaperone. “This is a DATE, right?” I said, our old joke. I pushed him outside, and showed him the outdoor … read more Saturday night date<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[84,82,1113,179,1112,20],"class_list":["post-8655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-84","tag-beauty","tag-breathe","tag-nature","tag-rehab","tag-tom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8655"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8659,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655\/revisions\/8659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}