With love and respect for the McLaughlin family there will be a few more days of silence…no blogging, no planning the 5K.  

 Godspeed Denny.

“An echo is what persists when the source is gone.”

xxoo

We are deeply saddened today by the untimely death of one of the fathers of our band of brothers. Our thoughts and prayers are with the entire McLaughlin family as they mourn the loss of their loved one.  Denny, we honor your life - you will be missed.  God be with you.

All Is Well

Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used
Put no difference in your tone,
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was,
Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval somewhere very near,
Just around the corner.
All is well.

By Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918)
Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral

xxoo
The Rosner-New Family

Ok folks…this is it. Wednesday evening we make a decision.  We have had WONDERFUL suggestions for the first annual “_______” event but we need more.  If you have an idea,  Private/Public we don’t care.  Just send it.  We need to name this baby!

danka shun

xxoo

Mike says “don’t talk about it, be about it”.  Michael is a SURVIVOR. A drunken drive home changed his life/our lives FOREVER but it was no accident.  There is a message, a cause, a reason that he is Traumatic Brain Injury SURVIVOR. The 5K is on!  

Mark your calendars - (after we get approval)

Saturday October 18, 2008

You are a group of VERY talented people and I am humbly and respectfully asking for your help.  I know nothing about planning an event of this magnitude but I am learning, thanks to Karl’s sister Ellyn. Ellyn is an event planner and has generously volunteered her services from afar to help guide the way.

Ellyn sent a packet to get things rolling and I now have 5 HUGE very detailed steps to follow to make this very important event a success.  I will need your support in every way - as we get closer I’ll need your experience, contributions of service, advertising, sponsorship, we’ll need t-shirts, bib #’s, banners, fliers, posters, a DJ, in addition to Mike we’ll need a local celebrity to speak, etc., etc., etc.

BUT FIRST….we need a name for the event.  What’s in a name? EVERYTHING! I’m going to start a discussion on the blog’s Forum section for your thoughts and suggestions for a name for this 5K.  Mike would like to call it “The Journey of Miracles 5K” and perhaps that’s what it will be but with just a few queries on Google, we’ve seen that maybe this isn’t so original.  Let’s get busy.  Let’s get creative. Let’s “be about it”. 

AND THEN…we need a route in the City…AND THEN… Approval …and then, and then….!

I know we can make this happen…

Sydney Gambini Jones shared a poem with Mike today that she thought was very fitting - Michael loved it and is quoting it already. Thank you for your intuitiveness Sydney.

xxoo

I thought an explanation/disclaimer might be in order for Mike’s post that included the letter to the pastor.  During church on Sunday, the pastor asked a couple of people to share their testimonies of how God had worked in their lives.  At the end of the service, he invited anyone else that felt they had a testimony of God’s work to write it on one of the blue cards or send it via the MAG website.  Mike announced before we even got out of the parking lot that he wanted to write a letter to pastor Scott to let him know how God had worked in him and changed his life. 

We got home, I went upstairs to change clothes and by the time I got back downstairs Mike had the church website pulled up.  He was trying to post but couldn’t get it to work.  I sat with him and showed him that he needed to register first and then with a password could log in and post his story.  Mike registered, got the password and began to type his letter.  He said he wanted to tell him what had happened to him and asked if I could help fill in what he could not remember.  There are times when Mike’s descriptive language is very simplistic, other times he is the language police.  If there’s a better word, he’ll let you know that you “should have said” or “so what you meant to say was…” English was never his strong suit but you wouldn’t know that if you hit him on a day he has police duty. 

As I gave him the details of what day, what time and so on he was quick to insert his own “proper” interpretation of what I should or could have said.  He can be very serious with policing what you say and of course we tease him endlessly.  He’ll rub his head and smile but doesn’t change his determination to correct you. We have a good time with it.

Like I said in my earlier post, Mike has been spending alot of time reading the postings and comments on the blog and spent about an hour Saturday afternoon on just the “we love mike” comments.  Based on some of his thoughts on Sunday, I think he had realized how many people cared about him during his time of need.  He read his Dad’s post just before writing the letter and had just heard the testimonies of the power of prayer at church - it was all very fresh in his mind.  He worked for about 45 minutes on his own and then asked me to come help him again.  My laptop can be frustrating and he was getting tired.

When I read what he had written, considering it was going to the Pastor, I thought it needed a little tweaking.  His feelings/thoughts sometimes bounced around so with his help, we talked about moving some things around so they would stay in sequence and then corrected capitalization and puncuation.   He knew what he wanted to say and he said it.  I helped him make it pretty.

On Saturday he had talked about wanting to post on the blog so after he finished the letter to the pastor Sunday, I asked him what he thought about taking that letter and letting it speak for his posting on the blog. He thought that was a good idea…saved him from typing so much on my laptop.  I changed the font to italics for the letter and he did the rest.

I thought it was important to add this detail to help you understand that although he isn’t always in touch with how he feels, there are times when he is and needs to get it out.  The next time he posts, it will be straight from him to you, no help with the pretty.  He doesn’t need to pretty it up for you guys - in fact he probably shouldn’t.

xxoo

The Star Spangled Banner - what a difficult song to sing.  The range required challenges most of us and although we sing loud and strong, our voices strain to keep the pitch…”and the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air…” but yet we sing.  It is to help Michael regain independence lost, among other must have’s (and usually by the dawn’s early light) that each and every day I look to the heavens for guidance.  The personal resolve required to overcome this brain injury at times seems insurmountable. Yet, we sing. We sing loud and strong because today the bombs are bursting in air.

I think I may have finally been successful at convincing Michael that waking prior to 7AM needs at least an attempt at going back to sleep.  So this morning when he got up a little before 6AM to use the bathroom, he went back to bed and was able to get a little more shut eye. Although I usually try to practice what I preach, I was awake for the day.  That alone time though gives me a chance to prepare for the day’s activities. 

We begin Week 3 with the Intellectual Devotional. We will begin preparation for an EBay Store with Michael responsible for planning the business start-up, creating an inventory spreadsheet, finding and determining the value for each item, and tracking each auction.  We will walk a mile and a third each day with a daily goal of shaving off time.  By Friday we will increase our distance to two miles.  We’ve talked about hosting a 5K in October which Mike would like to call ” The Journey of Miracles 5K” to commemorate the one year anniversary of (again his words) his new life.  Michael’s PT summer goal is to walk a 12 minute mile and we would like to be able to run this 5K in October.  So our current pace of 16.92 walking speed is a daily challenge to improve.  We are tandem walking with bamboo poles to encourage the involuntary swing of Mike’s right arm.  The injured brain still fights for the right side to remain weak so forcing the right arm activity is an attempt to win the battle.  Mike’s gait is also a work in progress. He is still swinging his leg instead of using it or his right foot to power himself forward.  I haven’t figured out a way to get his right foot to roll as he walks.  Physical therapists out there…any suggestions?

I did not lead the way this past week so I would be able to measure Mike’s progress with initiation.  Mike had such a great week the past week with reading the devotional on his own, taking notes on his own, getting breakfast and so on, I thought it would be good to increase the challenges for independent living. Was it the change in routine? Was it fatigue? Was it just a bad week?  This past week Mike needed prompting even to eat.  If you know him, you know he will not miss a meal - he loves to eat and when asked if he had eaten, he would say “no, but I’m starving”. On his own however he had made no attempts to feed himself.  He did not pick up his journal without being prompted, no reading without the prompt.  He would wake, go straight to the computer and sit for hours if allowed.  My theory… he’s lonely.  The computer connects to his friends…that’s where he wants to be.  Not here with me. 

No hurt feelings.  I totally understand.  He is a twenty six year old male who prior to the accident came home only on Sunday to have a good meal. The rest of the week, he was snugly positioned in the friendship cocoon.  As we’ve witnessed, this cocoon is vitally important to all of them.  It helps them define who they are. It is the place where they love, where they laugh, where they hurt, where they cry, but most importantly where they grow. It is in this friendship cocoon they one day come of age, spread their wings and fly away.  It was this secure environment, the One Love, that nurtured and willed Mike back to life.  It is necessary to his well being. 

This morning when we began the day I asked Mike what he read yesterday.  He told me he read about Noah.  He have me details about God’s instruction to Noah, about replenishing the earth “be fruitful and multiply”, about God’s promise to Noah that he would never again destroy humankind and symbolized it with a rainbow (although good to hear, we will probably destroy ourselves so he won’t have to), that he was 150 days at sea and 100 days grounded on Mt. Ararat and that Noah represents an ideal faith in God with trust and obedience. He was also able to tell me from Week 1 Day 3 that 5 boys discovered the Lascaux cave paintings in France and about the Five Books of Moses - The Torah from Week 1 Day 7.  About Hammurabi’s Code of Laws that included being thrown into a river to determine innocence or guilt from Week 2 Day 1.  From Week 2 Day 5 that among others he couldn’t remember, Mozart was considered a melody making genius.  Are you kidding?  I couldn’t remember any of it.

The update today ends with bombs bursting in air!  The thing with this brain injury is regaining the ability to make, keep and retrieve memory, about regaining the ability to learn and retain new information.  Oh, our journey is a long one but there is every reason to believe that God’s hands are gently moving us forward.  Michael’s progress may vary from week to week but have no doubt that he is in it to win it.  He may need a little prodding every now and then to stay focused, he may need a jump start to get those initiation juices flowing but… it was the hare that won the race right?

Sometimes the days are long and can drain the life right out of me.  There are times I can’t see that it is my belief that is being challenged.  It is in church on Sunday that my faith is restored.  I find renewed strength to believe.  To believe that no matter what the outcome, whether we like it, whether we understand it, that it is God’s plan and His will be done.  I have Hope. I have Faith.  We are blessed with each day.

LIVESTRONG Michael.

xxoo

I wanted to let my pastor know how God has worked in my life so I wrote this today after church and I thought maybe it would let you guys know how I’m feeling.  

Pastor Scott,
We are not members of the church but my family and I have been attending MAG since just after Easter. I wanted to give you my testimony of how God has worked in my life.  

I was never a real stand out Christian and actually quite the opposite. I was a very social 25 year old, hanging out with my friends, going to bars, chasing women, drinking heavily and living a pretty reckless life. In late October last year my life took a drastic turn.

After partying with friends, I tried to drive home from Manassas to Arlington under the influence of alcohol.  I have no memory of the accident but I’ve been told that me and my soft top Jeep left the road on I66 at Exit 66. It was a single car accident in the early hours of the morning when there weren’t many people on the road. If not for the cab driver that God placed behind me, that called at the onset of the accident, that was responsible for the quick response from the police,  I would not be here today. I was non-responsive at the scene and Code Blue when I arrived at Fairfax Hospital. I had to be revived and was not expected to live much less walk and talk. I was in a coma for almost 30 days and hospitalized for 3 months. After being released from the hospital I went back and forth to a rehabilitaion center until the end of May. Even my doctors say that my recovery so far has been nothing short of a miracle. Every day I feel blessed to be alive. God saved my life. I know that for sure.

I feel very blessed to be alive now because if there was anybody worth saving it was not me. If there was a bad way to live, I was living it. I don’t know why God saved me but he did. I have a new found appreciation for life itself. I no longer destroy my body with drugs and drinking and just being able to walk into church makes me wonder “why me?” sometimes.

Maybe as a reminder, I didn’t walk away unscathed. I had compression fractures to my back, a minor injury to my right knee and right shoulder but my head injury was the worst. If there was a part of my brain that could be injured, it was. I had a severe traumatic brain injury and as a result have had to work toward relearning everything. I can now walk without assistance. I can talk clearly. I can hear perfectly. Physically I can do all the things a person my age should be able to do, just working on speed and agility. I am even working with a friend of mine one day a week and still have very big aspirations for my future. I still have memory issues but I work hard every day to overcome them. I believe in time, it will come. I have hopes for a full recovery and more if that is God’s plan.

My family and friends set up a website to communicate my progress but now it is a way for me to read and to understand what I went through. It has also been a way for me to see how many people were praying for me to survive the accident.  The website is still up - it is www.weluvmike.com and though I don’t even know some of the visitors that keep up with my progress, they still pray for me and my recovery. My mom did a video and someone said to me how could anyone watching the video or following my progress ever question that there is a God. I feel that I am truly a testament to the power of prayer and God’s work even for the unworthy.

Respectfully,
Mike Rosner

Some family friends of ours i.e., the court of despair, are experiencing troubled times.  It is now our turn to be there for them. Miracles do happen and the power of prayer works. Keep hope alive.

We are Day 4 of reading from the Intellectual Devotional. He reads and takes relevant notes ..he remembers the subject matter each day and throughout the day. Michael is able to retreive and is retaining the information learned from Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3. There is new hope every day. 

xxoo

If you ask Mike what his plans are, he’ll tell you that he’s decided to be an astrophysicist. He’ll tell you that you need a PHD to be the type of astrophysicist that gets to do research in space. The motivation…the possibility of a future flight in space.  If you know Mike, you are probably not surprised because Mike has always had big dreams, huge aspirations.  The accident may have battered his brain but it didn’t squash the dreamer in him.  It began as a conversation about what he should do when he is ready or able to return to work.  A return to IT? A return to recruiting?  I suggested that maybe he leave the door open to other possibilities…offering that the new brain may be better suited for a different line of work.  There were many career paths that crossed my mind, none of which included becoming an astrophysicist. Mike did a little research on his own one day, found the educational requirements to make it happen and then re-opened the search for universities on-line.  An afternoon on the Internet and he now has three colleges selected with print outs that include the requirements for students with disabilities. He is facing that too.

Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain.  Gray is my new favorite color.  I try to live my life without the stark contrast of black and white, it seems to be too bipolar.  Too rigid.  Too far left, too far right.  I try to live the truth, in the light but it usually falls somewhere in between.  That place between black and white is gray.  There is a gray area between faith and reality.  Between encouragement to believe that all things are possible and the harsh reality of what we believe is the truth.  

How do we get from where we are today to a flight in space?  One day at a time. One foot in front of the other.  I gave Michael a book yesterday with a goal oriented task attached.  “If you plan to attend college again you must show that you can learn and retain new information”. Our first attempt with this exercise began last week with a book from Nate, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time - read 5 pages a day, take notes and then try to remember that information after reading the next 5 pages the following day…tooooo much! Whoa!

The most significant hurdle to learning after brain injury is memory loss and impairment. Michael’s capacity to receive, store and retrieve information has been effected. Short-term memory, recalling what happened yesterday is still tough but getting better. He may remember and retain old skills, but how will he be at learning new ones? I believe with repeated instructions and practice he can do anything.

The new book is The Intellectual Devotional. Each day of the week devoted to a different field of knowledge. Monday - History, Tuesday - Literature, Wednesday - Visual Arts, Thursday -Science, Friday - Music, Saturday - Philosophy and Sunday - Religion. The book begins on a Monday but we cheated and read Monday’s last night. He read it, closed the book and then summarized it for me. This morning before he saw the book, I asked him if he remembered what he read last night. Without hesitation he said ” I read in the daily devotional about the alphabet. About how the Egyptians created the alphabet because their prisoner slaves couldn’t read hieroglyphics…and something about Rosetta Stone in 1799. I don’t remember what that was about though. That the letter b is the word for house”. I stood in awe but questioned the letter “b” recall, I read the page last night also and I didn’t remember anything about the letter b. He responded “it was at the bottom of the page in italics”. I looked, yes it was. I didn’t read that part.

One page at a time, one foot in front of the other…he can do this. Mike says “I got nothing but time.”

xxoo

 Happy Birthday Grandma Vee - Happy Birthday Parker!

It has been an interesting week.  A birthday, well maybe two.  Mike’s on Wednesday - Bobby’s birthday was Friday.  Mike remembered it was his birthday when he woke up and although I tried to keep him busy, he couldn’t stay away from the life-link. Facebook, My Space and Gmail took him where he needed to be; to and with his friends.  We met Nate for lunch, then walked to the bookstore to look for Tim Russert’s book Big Russ and Me that Mike wanted to give Bobby for his birthday. He was antsy and unsettled.  A phone call from Matt while we were at Barnes and Noble to tell Mike what was in the works was exactly what he needed. 

Mike was swooped up late afternoon to celebrate his birthday the only way he knew how…with the band of brothers (Sylvette and Chrissy too).  The guys he has celebrated almost every birthday for over ten years (with Shannon almost twenty).  He loves these guys so much. Karl, Matt, Shannon, Justin, Danny and Nate (the biological) would lift his spirits and make him feel whole again like no one else can.  Put-Put golf, a Red Robin dinner and an autographed, numbered photo of Santana Moss paying homage to Sean Taylor.   Michael received two gifts that night; one that he sat proudly on his dresser where he lays his glasses.  The other,  the gift that keeps on giving.  The most valuable gift of all  -their loyalty and friendship. It is the bond that gives him strength, the bond that gives him hope, the bond that survived the brain injury.  TBI is a lonely place.

We walk a positive, quiet path with this brain injury most days but this week has been a little darker than most.  Perseverating, obsessing, rigid thinking lead to or contributed to a broken heart, a shaken ego, and lessons learned.  The girl - you know the story…moving too fast, can’t think of anything else (obsessing) and after a couple of weeks “mom, I think I want to tell her I love her”.  “you barely know her Michael, do you think you know her well enough to love her?”  He replied “I want to love someone.  I want someone in my life”.  One thing lead to another, he told her the love thing, her phone calls to him slowed down, excuse after excuse and then “mom, she broke up with me over the phone”.   Heartache is never easy but time heals, it passes…this too shall pass. Obsessing - lesson learned.

Mike has been working one day a week with a friend.  A friend that believes in Michael’s ability to find what is buried beneath the brain injury.  A mind that stores more knowledge than I could ever hope to acquire struggles sometimes to find it’s way.  Jim McNelis I cannot thank you enough for pushing Michael as hard as he pushes himself.  Although Mike was not successful in your challenge or his own challenge this week, you were able to tell him the truth without hurting him.  He responded humbly to your constructive explanation of why he may not have been able to complete the job. He was able to respond with dignity intact.  He is looking forward to the next challenge and loves and respects you even more.  He knows you will speak the truth no matter what the truth is. You believe in him just as he MUST believe in himself.  Rigid thinking - another lesson learned. I thank you for that.

A life changed - traumatic brain injury hurts.  We hear it, you hear it, HE hears it - there is a long road of healing ahead.  It is never easy for him or us but it is never too much.  We are blessed. We have Michael with us and we just celebrated his 26th birthday.  We went to one of his favorite restaurants on Friday - Arties in Fairfax.  He had the pork tenderloin with berry shortcake for dessert.  

During a conversation this morning as we were getting ready for church, now the king of quotes and corny sayings (Michael ) told me “if you believe you will recieve”.  I can tell you after this week of celebrating birthdays, of heartache and defeat - Michael’s attitude toward his recovery is still without question “I feel like a bull” .  Keep Hope Alive - remember? it is his slogan.

This blog is to document Michael’s progress and recovery.  We all love an inspirational story but there are times when the truth hurts - sometimes it isn’t pretty…no fairy tale here.  It is his life.

LIVESTRONG Michael.

xxoo