Today was a good day for us.Penelope was already asleep when Parker came home so their reunion had to wait until this morning. As they sat for breakfast together we think that we may have seen the first inkling of him smiling but we were so excited that he quickly went back to his determined stare.
Later in the morning PJ started crying in the bouncy chair and P-Lo tried to climb up into the chair with him almost as if she was trying to comfort him. In a world where we are less inclined to believe that there is anything left to chance, we wonder if these two weren't sent together to take care of each other.
We were concerned that we would be saddened by the differences in ability but it is actually good for us to see a real daily benchmark to see what he should be capable of so we can work on that with him. It is also clear that while Parker has spent the last month mostly lying in a hospital bed, Penelope has progressed significantly in her motor skills.
Our first visit to Garches was at 11 AM this morning. It is about 20-25 minutes by car to the west of Paris, past St. Cloud on the same exit as Versailles. As with Necker it is more of a campus of hospital buildings but unlike Necker it has much more green space and trees and is, in general, more open and light.
We first met with Chantal, the social worker who explained to us all of the financial support and help that we have available to us. I wont go into detail but we are starting rehabilitation after walking out of the hospital paying nothing. In short, I am beginning to get back a big chunk of the roughly 23% of my salary we have been paying the social system here these past years.
Afterwards, we were shown the therapy room in full action. There were about a dozen children with various limitations working with different nurses and therapists. We were again reminded of how blessed we are to have Parker with the level of capabilities he has already at this point.
We then met with the two doctors, Susanna Quijano and Veronique Coudert, who run the facility. It was fairly informal, almost casual and they spent almost an hour talking to us without giving us any feeling of time pressure. They were very interested in having our opinion on what we wanted to do and both independently expressed the opinion that most children at Parker's age re-educate themselves almost naturally. We worked out that we would target four afternoons at the hospital for the first week and see how that went and adjust at the end of the week as needed. Thursday we will switch the afternoon for the morning so they can do blood work and check his anti-convulsion medication level. They will also manage the contacts to make sure we get the MRIs and CT scans that we need for the various check-ups and the cochlear implant surgery.
Then, the nurses introduced themselves and we went home around 1:30PM. It felt a world away from the feeling of imprisonment at Necker and they made us feel like everything was going to be just fine-- it was refreshing.
Renee then came home and took a nap while Parker lay on her chest and Rachael watched Penelope. She was in heaven with the sun shining outside and her sweet baby boy in her loving arms.
We are slowly integrating back into a normal family life, cuddling the kids, reading to them in bed and just being together. We are looking forward to a weekend where we can just hang-out, walk to the park, watch a show and sleep. Renee and I both feel physically exhausted. Though our our bodies have remained amazingly healthy these past several weeks, we are ready for a recuperative rest.
