Here's a bit of an update on Chris' condition.

After about 5 days on the trauma floor,Chris was moved to Parkwood Hospital, the Aquired Brain Injury unit. He is supposed to undergo physical, occupational, speech and other therapies before coming back home or going back to work.

Right now, he's home for the weekend. He is able to use a walker (slowly) and a wheelchair, and has been given permission to put weight on his broken leg if he can. Unfortunately, he often thinks that he can do more than he really can, and ends up falling down. He fell down one day at the hospital and called to the nurses with a plaintive wail "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" Wonder how long he was waiting to use that line.

Moving about is extremely awkward for him because he broke his right leg and left wrist, so has to move in totally counter-intuitive way using the left leg and right arm. Try it sometime, it's confusing.

His memory is still not great and not likely to keep improving. However, it now seems to be only slightly worse than what it has always been. He's always had a lousy memory for names and conversations, and a poor sense of time. Now it's just a bit worse. They're still doing evaluations and will be working with him to compensate for memory problems (i.e., mnemonics and a palm pilot, which he was going to get before the accident anyway.) His medical knowledge base seems untouched. He's still very tired and needs to nap a lot, but that's due to the healing process and slowly clearing up too.

The estimated discharge date is May 4th. Still no clear idea of when he'll be going back to work, although thankfully the operative word is still"when" instead of "if".

It has been a long couple of weeks,filled with running about and trying to do paperwork, meetings, housework,child care, Chris care, and get an idea of what the future holds. For the first couple of days I was too busy to think or feel anything, and Chris was too out of it to even understand what was going on. I think I thought that if I slowed down and thought about what was going on and what might be in store for us, I would freak out and never stop crying.

And yet the chief emotion once we both allowed ourselves to feel anything at all was... gratitude. Odd to be feeling so incredibly lucky, what with Chris still being in the hospital and neither of us really knowing how long he'd be there and when or whether he would be able to return to work. But I just felt like I wanted to thank whoever was responsible for the fact that he was still alive. As exhausting as it was dealing with everything, I felt incredibly grateful to have to deal with it.

Chris asked me if I was bitter about the accident, and I realized I really wasn't. Which is strange, since I've been so bitter and resentful about so many things to do with his job, and this was a far worse thing to have happen to us, and all because of a hobby... but there you go. I just felt gratitude.

Gratitude for our children, whose visits were often the one bright spot in Chris' day and who, in Daniel's case, behaved with more maturity and sensitivity than I ever would have expected.

Gratitude to have found friends like Sarah and Reiner, who offered all they could and who took care of the children many times, and Todd and Susan, who drove down from Kingston Thursday night and took care of the children and the house, letting me be with Chris secure in the knowledge that the kids were OK. Every time I tried to thank them, they replied they were just doing what they were supposed to do. There is a quote from a book whose name I can't place, something like "there are magnificent beings on this earth, who go around posing as humans". I got an idea of what that meant during the last couple of weeks.

Gratitude for Chris' mom, who visited Chris daily and helped him through the first few days at Parkwood. Gratitude to so many of our neighbours, who offered to help in any way they could even though many of them hardly knew us. And to the residents who visited Chris daily and offered to help us in any way they could and sent fruit baskets and encouragement. And to all of you who called, sent e-mails, and generally sent good wishes and prayers our way. It meant more to us than you can possibly imagine.

And most of all, I feel gratitude for Chris being alive. Whether he ever walks normally or practices medicine again, that he is still here with his sense of humour and optimism and love for me and our kids. It's humbling to see just how strong he isand how incredible his optimistic nature is.

Chris said, while he was still at the trauma ward in a great deal of pain, that he felt like the main character in American Beauty. He gets killed at the end of the movie and says he can't even feel angry about that because he's just so grateful for every moment of his stupid little life, for all the beauty in it.