Monique's Friday Update!

Featuring A Job-Seeking Cane-Wielding Animal Doctorette, A Broken Neck, Some Water, and Bad Artwork! How can this end poorly? Tri, Tri Again!

Monique- FREEday Update!

Lots of accomplishments, and a tiny snake! Ya'll have a great week!!
Monique Koll's Friday Update!

Monique-Jenny's update and my Friday Update!

I'm sure Jenny will  tell you in her own words, but I happen to be posting now, so I'll update you - she finished a spinning class yesterday! This Is Big! She's stoked, so am I!!

Every Friday I do an update on my blog: Tri, Tri Again! just for your perusal. I'll copy it here. Have a great week!

Friday's Update Spectacular!

Me: I'm soooo sensitive to ambient temperature! I wonder what people did a long time ago before air conditioning when they broke their necks. Oh, that's right, they died!

Nic: Yeah, life was much simpler back then.

Me: Sigh. Things are quite complicated in this day and age.

In the news:

Drugs-down to 25mg baclofen a day, and that does it for prescriptions! I was on 7+ types of meds so this is fantastic. Baclofen is an anti-spasmodic that I'm slowly weaning down. Spasms, by true definition, are created by disruptions in the spinal cord. Related to the hypertonicity of my leg, it happens when the muscle tries to talk to the brain via the spinal cord, and the message is all garbled, making  the muscle twitch or contract in various ways. There's a possibility I'll need it long-term, but it's really a small possibility, and way more likely I never needed it in the first place! Baclofen just never seemed to work for me. It doesn't cause any side effects really, I just don't want to be on meds if I don't need them. My spasms are considerably better; now they're tiny and just a bit annoying every once in a while.
Spasms are hard for me to talk about because they can be debilitating, they can progressively get worse, and many people have them and they never ever ever go away. I'm just hopeful mine will since I'm so highly functioning. But I'm getting sad and fearful just typing about it.
Luckily I haven't had ANY pain since the first few weeks of hospitalization, and I haven't needed pain meds at all this year!

Work-well...this week? The only thing holding me up is honestly redundant superfluous paperwork. Incredibly frustrating. I'm losing hundreds of dollars a day because of it.

Taxes-done! almost ;)

Bike court-I was all prepared to defend myself, it was a no-brainer really and after reading  the laws it was very clear to me that I was in no way in the wrong. THEN I happened to know a lawyer who was there for other cases, who is also a runner/triathlete, who discussed my case with the judge and had my tickets cleared! Woohoo! Not that I wouldn't have won it on my own but it was a big weight off my shoulders. Also there was Ben Broussard, who's family, if you remember, took the video of Nic and me crossing the finish line. Completely ran into him by chance. I love this place!

This is the video, how awesome Ben & Family! Whoa, Really loud!

Driving-soon I hope!

Therapy-FaBuLoUs!! Finally got to try the e-stim machine that would help my hams overcome my quads, but it didn't work very well for me after all. MAINLY because I've improved so much over the last couple of weeks that it was obsolete! It's not perfect, but my quads are really starting to calm down. Things are looking totally up! No One Knows, I may never get better past this point, but I'm expected to make a 95%+ recovery. I say 100%.
My hand is also getting better! I can shake hands again now - this is big! - and my strength and function is returning. SLOW but definite progress. I get frustrated but Simonne my OT can always show me where I've made progress even if I can't see it myself.

Geaux Run rocks. You should check them out.

Geaux Run Link

FestiVELO-Laffy's 1st Bike Festival was last Sunday, and a huge success! It's "Bike To Work" week this week. I'm incredibly hopeful for the cycling future here!

Lastly, I'm part of another blog if you haven't checked it out already, with two other women that battle life-threatening lifestyle changes. We're all the same age, all are mothers, and all stay healthy despite our challenges! Here's the link:

Cajun Titanium

Perky- A little bit about me....

My name is Amy, otherwise known as "Perky"! Jen gave me that name in high school and I've always loved it! I'm the mother of three beautiful kids, the oldest of which was Bailey, my 14-yr-old who was in the car with me when our lives were forever changed by a head-on collision with a drunk driver on 12/31/11. I'm not gonna lie...this has been very hard, and like my counterparts, I don't shy from a challenge!!!

Bf my accident, I graduated magna cum laude in pre-med with minors in chemistry, physics and Latin. I was supposed to take my MCAT to get into medical school in April 2003, but found out I was pregnant for my 3rd child, and realized I couldn't chase my dreams just then. I continued to run 6 miles per day (8.5 min/mile) for all 3 pregnancies, and prided myself on not being a pregnant couch potato:-). I went on to get my BS in nursing and graduated in 2009, and was working as a telemetry nurse at the time of my accident.

Don't worry...I'm not as uptight as I sound! I DO have a type A personality, but also a crazy sense of humor, and like my youngest baby, Mary, pride myself on being "the funnest girl I know"!!!

The accident broke my left leg in 4 places, one of those being a completely crushed kneecap. I crushed my left elbow, broke almost every rib, had a spinal fracture, bleeding in my brain and a ruptured spleen. Bailey had a broken left hand and had 2 permanent teeth knocked out.

I don't want this accident to be the thing that ends me, or my determination. As Jen and Monique can attest, it's hard keeping yourself mentally and emotionally upbeat thru such difficult circumstances, and we rely on each other a LOT to get each other thru!!! We've all lived nightmares, but thank God we had each other to get us thru!!! They are two of the best, strongest women I know, and I'm honored to call them "friends".

Monique- A little bit about me....

I'm Monique. I'm lazy, so I'm going to use the bio I put together for The Rotary Club of Lafayette North recently! 
Monique was born and raised in New Orleans, Kenner really, until her last couple of years of high school when she moved with her family to Covington to raise ratites (ostriches, emus, rheas.) LSU survived her 5 years there while she received her Bachelor's of Science in Wildlife and Fisheries with minors in Zoology, Microbiology, and Music Composition. She then finally received her DVM from Ross University on St. Kitts Island, spending her clinical year at Mizzou in Columbia, Missouri. She now works at ULL NIRC as a vet, and lives with her son, Nic, 2 dogs, 2 cats, and a snake. She loves reading, hiking, pianoing, birdwatching, and of course Saving the Animals!

Besides that, I started triathlons just about a year ago and was training for one, bicycling, when I was hit from behind by an unlicensed/uninsured/unregistered driver, which broke my neck. I didn't know if I was going to be able to feed myself, much less walk, again. But, I'm recovering. It ain't easy, and it's tough, but it's happening! I'm 100% out of a wheelchair and I aim to race again!
I have my own blog here: Tri, Tri Again!

Jenny and I have known each other since high school and have been friends since college, through our mutual friend Loey! Jenny introduced me to Perky because our situations are so similar. So here we are!

OH, my boyfriend and I were recently temporarily famous for this silly picture at the end of a half marathon...
Here's us: The Today Show