We Made It

Well, it was a long day yesterday, but we made it safely to Oklahoma.

The flight out of Seattle left the gate a little early, but before we get get off the ground, another plane had to make an emergency landing for medical reasons. Then some of the lights on the landing strip went out, so they had to switch around where planes were landing and taking off. In Minneapolis, where we had our connecting flight, we were scheduled to have an hour layover. With the delay in taking off and knowing that Randy isn't able to run as fast as he could before, I was a little worried about making our connecting flight. When we tried to talk to the flight attendant about our concern, her response was "Well, I am sure there are a lot of people that will have tight connections." Then, right after the plane came to a stop and pilot had turned off the fasten seatbelt sign, the entire plane lurched forward. Unfortunately, I was standing up at that time and fell forward a bit, which didn't sit well with my back! I guess the wheels had fallen off those chalk things they use to keep the plane in place at the gate. Everyone had to sit back down so that they could pull the plane back up to the gate. We finally got off the plane 10 minutes before the next one was suppose to leave. We made a mad dash to next gate, which of course was not anywhere near the one we had landed at, only to find out that our next plane was also delayed and we hadn't needed to stress at all! Even with the delay, though, we landed in Tulsa, OK earlier than scheduled.

Randy did amazing throughout the entire trip. The motion sickness patch he put on the night before really helped. He did better than Cass and I did ~ with us both having those miserable colds, our ears were bothering us a bit.

We have had a really good visit so far. Randy finished reading a book today, which is a huge deal. It is the first book he has read start to finish since the accident. He has a hard time remembering what he read, sometimes even from beginning of the paragraph to the end. The book he read was one I had just finished. It was a short little book about a woman who had suffered a head injury in 1997 ~ so somewhat recently. The book was written a little bit by her mother and then she wrote a few chapters at the end. It was an interesting story. The woman was 32 when it happened. It was a single car accident and she lost her 6 year old son. She ended up spending 9 months in prison for negligence that led to his death. One thing I found interesting in this book was that this woman said she didn't really "wake up" until 3 years after the accident. Before that, she had very little memories of things that she did and didn't feel as though she was really aware of what was going on around her. It made me wonder if at some point later, there will be a moment of "waking up" for Randy or if that moment has really already come for him.