Rearview Taylor

10:15pm

It seems like we see the backside of Taylor more than the front these days. Although we haven't kept track, it seems like 1/2 of the time he spends at home he's parked in front of the computer working on something school related.

He has classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but spends most of Tuesday and Thursday working on class work. Today, he spent 6 hours at the library. He is committed to school in a way we've NEVER seen before. He's taking tough classes, but you wouldn't know it by the grades he's getting. I asked him to explain one of the Trig equations to me in terms I could understand, but I lost him at the third word.

Taylor schedules social time with friends, but his primary focus is school. Before the accident, he did school on his terms - showing up and making average grades without much trouble. His objective, I think, was to make good enough grades to keep up happy and spend his free time goofing off. Now, it's all about school.

One downside to him spending so much time at school or studying is that he's spending less time at the gym. He's not as stable when walking as he is when he's going to the gym on a regular basis. We saw a huge improvement over the summer when he went often. I'm not sure if the exercising actually improved the walking/balance, but I'm sure it didn't hurt. HeWe're trying to get him motivated to get back exercising, but his stamina is not nearly what it was before the accident, so it's hard to get him interested in working exercise in between studying for classes. Last night, he was in bed at 8pm, which was unheard of in years past.

He has an appointment at Shands in Gainesville on October 21st to check on the progress of his healing from the surgery. The scars on his face are completely gone, and the one from the Trach scar removal is fading away.

He still wants to do the big surgery - the transplanting of the muscle to help restore movement on the left side of his face - but he doesn't want to miss any classes to do it. We're encouraging him to take next Summer off and do it then. He'll turn 23 next September and he'll no longer be carried on our insurance policy, so if he doesn't do it next year it will be a problem since it will be a "pre-existing condition" with a new insurance company.