Santa Rita Rocks!

Friday during the day Dylan was able to attend the State Fair in Phoenix, apparently he had a wonderful time there! They allowed the kids that went to go to the petting zoo, he said he saw chickens, goats, cows and various other animals, and they allowed them to ride some rides. Dylan thoroughly enjoyed riding on the roller coaster!! They said he threw his arms up in the air and was smiling from ear to ear while he rode it! Then on the way out the aide that was with him acquired a stuffed animal for Dylan even though the game booths weren’t open yet …


Hopefully there will be pictures to come, they said they got some good ones of him.
Saturday morning when we got to Hacienda, Dylan was already up and doing physical therapy. His therapist was so thrilled when she, with Dan’s help, was able to put Dylan on the stairs and he did AWESOME!!! It’s a set of two stairs on one side with a platform in the middle and two more stairs on the other side, he did it like nobody’s business. The therapist said that usually when they start working with the stairs the patient has to put both feet on each step and repeat that all the way up the stairs, but Dylan just walked them normally, one foot on each step and away he went!!! She was so excited! We repeated this exercise multiple times on Saturday and Sunday since she had Dan there to help her if she needed him. Dylan’s normal therapy is walking on the treadmill for many, many minutes daily and working floor mat exercises or putting a ball through a basketball hoop while standing with his walker.


Saturday night we took Dylan to support his friends at their band performance! Santa Rita High School band was in Phoenix at a local high school to perform, (Santa Rita is the school Dylan is going to enroll in) and so we took him over there to see his friends. Let me tell you the smile on Dylan’s face when he saw his friends out there was bright enough to light up the entire city of Phoenix!!! He was practically dancing in his chair when he saw them. There were five friends that he knew last year in school there. They were equally excited to see him!! They told him their performance was “for him” and they even had a few minutes to visit and take pictures when they finished performing! It was so amazing to see the love/friendship/caring pouring out of these kids for Dylan! It really touched our hearts to see how much they miss him and how excited they were to spend a few minutes with him!! They were all asking when he’d be back at school and if he was going to attend Santa Rita, it was nice to be able to tell them that he would be attending there and he should be home soon.


Sunday was a relax and unwind kind of day…Dylan was feeling a little under the weather, I think, but we went over to the park, which he loves to do, and spent about forty-five minutes over there just watching the people play soccer. After he had his lunch we took him with us for our lunch at Five Guys burgers, he LOVED having some of the meat patty from my burger. He was so excited to be out and in that atmosphere! There was a lot of loud music and tons of people in there! He was also happy to go for a ride in the car, he likes to turn the radio on as loud as we’ll let him and rock out to “his” music!!


We also took him over to the Angel House, which is located on the property at Hacienda, and let him relax a bit and watch some TV with us over there, he really enjoys being outside the “hospital” environment. He seems to open up and become animated when he’s away from it!! We have decided that it’s best to have him away as much as possible when we are there on the weekends!!! We are planning all kinds of small activities for the next few weeks so he’s busy.

I am still working on getting him enrolled at Santa Rita when he comes home. The school psychologist needs to look at his evaluations from the hospital to see what we need to set up for an easy transition back into a “normal” routine. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well with that. I don’t have any new information on when he’s going to transfer to Barrows/Phoenix Children’s Hospital yet, but we should be hearing from the insurance within the next week. I’ll keep everyone posted as I find out. Thank you for all your continued support, thoughts, prayers and love!!!! It is all appreciated more than I could ever express!!! ~Keri