He Makes Me Laugh

Dan is doing well. We were just hoping at a chance to see him tonight and as it turned out we found his Dad who was lost and helped him find the rehab center and were lucky enough to get in to see him. He was telling me and Jim Smith about having his dressings changed on his wound vac and was cracking us up. He is doing well, he is in some pain yet trying to not take too much in the way of pain meds. He had a lot to say tonight and has really come around to remembering things in just the past 3 or 4 days. He is also sorting out what was reality and what was a dream from the past 3 weeks. While at times he sounds confused I really don't think he is. I think he is just trying to recover from being totally out of it for the past 3 weeks....you can imagine there is a lot to process. For instance, he wants to tell us about all of his injuries as if we didn't know, but from his perspective he just found out so he assumes this is all new information for all of us.

As of yesterday he didn't remember anything about the fall. On the ride down from Flagstaff today he all of a sudden remembered and told us what happened. We had previously speculated that he crossed on a cable car but that is NOT what happened. He was hiking along the creek and crossed the creek by hopping across on some big rocks in the stream. Once on the other side the bank gets steep and rather than get wet or go back, he went up. Where he climbed up wasn't too steep or technical and he cleared it easily I am sure. He was walking on the top of the cliff and he simply slipped and fell. He remembers barely clipping a tree. If you have looked back in my blog you will recall me talking about a dead tree we thought he was trying to climb up. One of our summer staffers went onto the top when I was there and the top is sloped and covered in loose rock and debris and is very treacherous, that is what caused Dan to fall. He does remember falling the first 20 feet thinking he was going to die. After that he doesn't remember much until last Friday. Although there are some memories in between those two that he is trying to figure out. According to Dan's account I have no doubt he fell 40 feet and maybe more like 50 feet with the first part of that being a slide down. There is no question that God was with him.

Right now they are planning on him being in the rehab center for 3 weeks, but if he progresses as fast as he has been I wouldn't be surprised if he was out sooner. Things are going so well for Dan. I will probably go see him fairly often so if you have any well wishes don't hesitate to pass them on to me and I will be happy to get them to him.

Or here is the address if you want to send him something he is in room 102

Mountain Valley Regional Rehabilitation Hospital
3700 N. Windsong Drive
Prescott Valley, AZ 86314

Thanks for all your prayers, it is good to have him less than 30 minutes away instead of an hour and half away. Keep praying for him.
Kris