Pain Meds w/o the Care Bears, Another 4.0, and Where's Jake

Greeting and Salutations Faithful Stapleton Blog Readers

I know I know it has been a while since a good update but I plan to make amends today.

Let’s start with an update on Jess. Monday will be 18 weeks since the wreck, she continues to recover but is no where near 100% of her mobility before the wreck. Her therapy has been scaled back to 2 times a week and continues to help some. We have been seeing a pain management specialist for about 6 weeks now and he has been able to help as well. Jess is currently working with a non-narcotic med to control her pain and the results are pretty good. On a good day she can get back 70% to 80% of her pre-wreck mobility for a period of time, but we want her back to 100% of pre-wreck without any drugs. We still have a long way to go. At least I have some solace in the fact that the pain meds are helping somewhat and for now the migraines have backed off a little. But more importantly she is feeling somewhat human again.

Jess earned another 4.0 last semester despite the wreck. (the girl is a walking brain box). She had to take an incomplete in one class but she plans to have that work finished up and turned in by July. (this involves the testing of a unsuspecting minor) She is taking 2 classes this summer and if all goes well she should graduate with her MA in Special Education next spring. In the last couple of weeks she has begun to look for work, but with the WV job market & the fact she is going to need to student teach 3 days a week next spring it is a complicated process. She had made arrangements with her previous employer to accommodate this but trying to find a new comparable position that will do this would be a stretch at the very least (of course, after the way she was treated by her former employer, we now doubt they would have honored their commitment). We are currently investigating several avenues of employment for her right now, so if anyone has any leads please let us know.

Jess’s spirits remain fairly good, but needless to say this “putting her life on hold” thing is a little hard to swallow. Especially when she was working, going to school, or involved in something 16 hours a day and that was all put on hold because of an unplanned accident (this would of course be completely different is it was a planned accident). Please continue to keep her in your prayers as we still have a good way to travel along the recovery road we have been placed on.

Jake what have you been up to?

Well thank you for asking. Since my last good blog entry (those are defined as updates about the family & everything else, as opposed to stuff that just interests me) I have spent 3 weeks on the road 2 in Lincoln, NE and 1 week in the Elkins, WV area. Some circumstances have arisen in the last few weeks that are going to make this year my most traveled and project laden since I began with the company (let me put it this way by the end of the summer I will have enough Hilton Honors Points so that when we go to Hawaii next year for our 10th anniversary, I will not be paying a dime for lodging and possibly airfare as well). Needless to say, my work is enough to keep my worn down right now, and with everything else, I have been a whipped puppy lately. The forecast for the summer is not looking too good either.

Lincoln was nice, I really liked the city. It reminded me of Columbus, OH, only smaller and cleaner. The city did have one Achilles heel, no Outback for 50 miles! I was out there for 2 weeks of software testing and I stayed over the weekend, which is a little unusual for me. Some of you may not know this, but in Nebraska they take their football a little seriously. So much in fact that for their Red & White scrimmage game 82,000 people showed up (yes that is correct 82,000 people showed up to watch the team play themselves, I just don’t get it) and hence I headed out of town for the day. It was a pretty fun day I went to the Strategic Air & Space Museum and had a blast. Some of you may not know it but I have a huge love for aircraft and would like to learn to fly someday. But to spend 4 hours in a museum of legendary aircraft was incredible for me. (you can see more about the visit here)

After I was done at the museum I went over to Omaha, NE and drove into Iowa to take a look around. Iowa made state number 26 of my goal to see all 50 states before I kick the bucket. I also go the chance to visit or at least see Offut Air Force Base, the former home of the Strategic Air Command. Military History has always been fascinating to me, so it was a really nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon it was my only day off while I was in Nebraska. Some of you may not know this, I am only 9 hours away from a full History degree at Marshall but I will probably never get the chance to complete it. Although I may need to start a poll: If I had 2 BA’s, would that trump Jess’s BA & future MA? But I digress.

During my second week in Lincoln I received a call that my cousin Steve Turman had been killed in an automobile accident. To be honest, Steve and I were never really close. We played together a lot when we were younger, but as the high school years came around we grew apart and didn’t really keep up with each other too much. Throughout his life Steve had his share of problems, he also touched too many lives to count. I can say this of him: to me, his lasting legacy to his boys and everyone will be that no matter your circumstance you can turn your life around, you can accept and put your trust in the Lord and all will be forgiven and He will be your Shepherd. For that I am extremely honored to say he was my cousin. Rest in peace Stevie, you will be missed and you are an example to us all.

Steve’s funeral took place on Saturday, April 26th. I was able to travel home to attend the service and was honored to be a pallbearer. Please continue to keep Steve’s family in your prayers, as they will need them everyday for many months yet to come. Through the first few weeks of May I was busy catching up on customer calls and work. Mom had a cataract surgery on her right eye and received a really cool eye patch. However she did not respond to any of my pirate jokes. Her eye is healing nicely and she will have her left eye done in August.

I also had another very exciting project that took a lot of my time. Our church recently installed a video system with one of our goals being to access the Sunday worship service online. So after a couple of weeks I came up with a way to make it happen. You can see an example of it here. This was my first experience at producing video content for the web and all the challenges that go with it. One of my major hurdles in doing this was my PC. It is a little long in the tooth and processing video is a young CPU’s game. Once things get back to normal around the house, I am trying to talk Jess into a PC upgrade for the Lord. (Do you think she’ll buy it?) All joking aside, we hope that this will be a great outreach tool. Some Churches have a wider outreach online than they do through their physical meetings.

The rest of May has been or will be traveling. However while I was in Elkins this week I took an evening an saw Iron Man, it was excellent. Next week I will be in the Cleveland area then home for a week. I hope this catches everyone up on what has been happening here at Stapleton Command. In the future I will try to update more regularly to avoid these War & Peace updates.

Everyone Have a good week and take care!