Saturday, November 3, 2012Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2008. As you can see Mattie was holding a remote control for the car on the floor with his left hand. He was doing this because his right arm was healing from limb salvaging surgery. That day a friend brought Mattie a stuffed animal of a Jack Russell Terrier (which looked a lot like JJ, our resident Jack Russell in our complex). Mattie had the stuffed animal taking a ride on the car. However, if you knew Mattie well, then you also knew that his play wasn't confined to his room. He would have remote controlled cars trailing down the hallways of the PICU greeting nurses. Which brought some humor to a very frenetic and serious place. Featured with Mattie in this photo are Whitney and Lesley (the dynamic duo child life interns!). These two ladies not only cheered up Mattie, but seeing them was like a ray of sunshine for all of us. I also noticed in this photo that Mattie's feet were bandaged up. Mattie did not hurt his feet, but there were times due to treatment that his skin would bother him intensely. Sometimes his skin would itch or burn, and we found one way to help Mattie feel more protected was to wrap the particular body part up in gauze. I am not sure if it technically made a difference, but to him it mattered, and that was all that counted.
Quote of the day: Speak from the heart and the truth will be shown. ~ Jean Paul-Alice
It is 7am on a Saturday and Peter and I are up and mobilizing. We were invited to a wedding today in Cape May, NJ. At first, given all the reports of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, we weren't sure this wedding would take place, but we have been told that Cape May wasn't hit as badly as other seaside communities in New Jersey.
Naturally I am going with my camera and the evidence of my observations will speak for itself. We return to DC tomorrow, and therefore on Sunday's blog I will report about our trip and the wedding we attending. The person getting married was one of Mattie's kindergarten teachers. Larry understood and appreciated Mattie, and he is still very involved in our Foundation today. So we share a Mattie connection and we know that Mattie will be with us in spirit today.
Typically I like to write the blog on site and report about the happenings of the day. So leaving the blog behind is a change of pace for me and a FIRST. Thanks for checking in with us and stay tuned for a Cape May update tomorrow.
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