I am sitting here at school awaiting the arrival of my brother Chris, who is flying up to Baltimore to visit me for the weekend. I am excited to have Chris come stay with me for a couple of days… Hopefully he will overtake the ‘MOM’ duties and cook and clean. I have been extremely busy with my day to day duties. I have been doing therapy three days a week and school the other two days. It is wearing me out and I am so ready for Christmas break!!!

My therapy has been going really good. Both Claire and Scott have been working with me to use the arm crutches when I walk in my braces. This is really hard and takes a lot of upper body strength. I am getting better at it and it is starting to come to me. With enough practice, things always seem to get easier. I think back to my baseball playing days when I was a kid. There would be games that I didn’t quite hit the baseball as well as I anticipated to. The next day and for the next week I would get in the batting cage and work my hitting. The next game I always seemed to hit better than I did in the last game. You can say that my therapists’ have had me in the batting cage of late. I actually got to where I was taking some quality steps this Monday with Claire and Mike with the arm crutches. This was very encouraging and I feel like I will continue to get better at it.

I am working on putting together a video of my therapy. It will consist of me crawling, walking, and doing other various exercises. I am excited to see what it turns out like. I am using all of the new video editing software that the Softball fundraiser provided. I am still very thankful for all the work that the students and volunteers put in to help relay my message through the videos. I will continue to keep you up to date with everything that is going on. Thanks a lot for all of the thoughts and prayers. God Bless!!!

Matt C

It has been awhile since I have last posted. I have been extremely busy with school and therapy. I have finished all of my midterms up so things have slowed down a bit. I am really enjoying school and like all of my professors. I am wanting to go to law school so I am taking some pretty tough courses. All of them are going really well and I am learning a lot.

I had a very pleasant week last week with my mom coming up to Baltimore to stay with me. She had the opportunity to come see all the new things that I have been doing in therapy and also the opportunity to cook… Hooray! We had a really good time and it was great to have her up here. In therapy I am doing some really neat things. My walking has improved drastically… I am walking up and down the halls with ease. Another new thing that is really cool is that I am now able to crawl. Claire and I tried it one day on the mat and sure enough, I was able to crawl. I am pulling my legs back and forth as I crawl on the floor… This is very encouraging and uplifting! I guess you have to crawl before you walk. The other day I was in the harness walking down the hall and Claire felt my hamstrings firing. I was able to take steps without the braces using the harness. This was also pretty exciting. I recorded all of this with my video camera, so I will work on putting together a video soon. Thanks a lot guys for all of the support. You guys are my rock and I am very thankful to have you on my side. Thanks again and God Bless!!!

Matt C