Sorry about the break. After the hospital Dad, Neil, Sally and I met Terry in North Topsail for supper. Terry brought along Candace, one of the clients that had just finished her umbilical training. We went to a seafood restaurant there in Topsail. It was a good meal, and better conversation. Candace filled me in on what to expect with the "umbilical" training. She said it will take a while to get used to having a dog under your feet and attached to you at all times. She also said it is hard but at the end of the training I would be surprised at the results. Sally and I would be closer than we are now. She also told me about her trip to a shoe store in high heels. I guess she was looking at shoes and accidentally stepped on Lilly's foot. Lilly yelped out and Candace was very embarrassed. That was when Candace told me that if I were to end up in that situation I would become embarrassed too. I told Candace that just the thought of me wearing high heels was embarrassing enough. Candace also told me what to expect the next day when it came to going to UNC Wilmington. She went there and told me it was one of the most beautiful campuses I would see. She will be a great resource of information if I need it during my "Umbilical" training. After super we all split company and Neil, Dad, Sally and I headed back towards the house. Overall this day was incredibly stressful and my back and shoulder had already started to hurt from the stress. But it was still a good day!!
Thursday rolled in with an early morning that started in Wilmington. Back in uniform we headed to the UNC campus. Sally and I were to meet a couple of the head staff at the college. Pretty easy morning with the exception of the soccer balls that were very interesting to Sally. She quickly decided though that they were boring to watch since I wouldn't let her go play. We went in to the office spaces at the colleges and met 2 gentlemen. One is to become the next dean and the other I wasn't quite sure of his position. As Terry introduced us the other gentleman mention that he had been in the Medical Service in the Army. Of course I couldn't pass up the opportunity to pick on the Army and he and I engaged in a little inter-service banter. Then the both of us refocused on the Air Force. After we left the office Terry told me the other gentleman was the vice chancellor for the college. Whoops. I guess I am still not cut out for being around college too much. At least the 2 of them still had smile when we left. Terry took a couple more pics of me ans Sally just to prove that I went to the campus. Then we were off again. Our next stop in Wilmington was at the Western Shoppe. The store where the week before the owner kicked out one of paws4peoples other clients, Amanda, and her dog Ellie. I was a little nervous about the whole thing but I needed a new pair of boots so it worked out well. As we went into the store Belinda was the clerk inside. She helped me to find a new pair of boots, and there were no problems. What a difference though. The last pair of boots I remember buying cost me $75.00 and that was expensive. This pair cost quite a bit more. Just another shock of losing 14 years and waking up in another time. The owner did come into the store and he and Terry stood and talked while I paid for my boots. Later I found out that Terry had told him that if it wasn't for Sally I would have never been able to come into his store and buy a pair of boots. Terry also told me that when he told Mr. Bryant that I was a vet Mr Bryant kind of got glassy eyed and said he had a lot of support for us and quickly excused himself. A real big difference from the news reports I saw on the man from the week before. After we left the store we went out for lunch and Terry started telling me more of the whole "umbilical" process. He also gave me a carabiner to use during the training. After lunch we went back to the college to meet with Amanda's Mom. She is a prof there. It was a good meeting. She had never met Sally before and was really surprised at how well she just laid at my feet while we talked. Suzanne I think will become a great resource for me later. She told me more about Amanda, and how much Ellie has helped her. Having a nephew that has cerebral palsy it was pretty easy to understand how much help Ellie was for Amanda. Suzanne was excited to hear that Sally and I are going to go down to Wilmington on the 18th for the 5k run they are having and hang out for a while. This was a great day and defiantly one that I will remember. After our meeting with Suzanne Terry, and us parted ways until Friday morning when we were to meet for breakfast. Neil, Dad, Sally and I headed back to the house and a little bit of relaxing. When we got to the house the UPS truck showed up with my Wii. When all of this started with me I found out that with my Traumatic Brain Injury, my balance was affected. I attended vestibular rehab for a little bit but when I got to the point of hating being touch I quit going. Commander Webster had said something about getting a Wii and it might be ale to help me with some of the exercise programs that it had. So I had ordered one. Since Dad was down here I ordered a fishing game too. Thought he might get into it. So anyway, I spent an hour or so trying to figure out how to plug in all of the cables and understand all the gizmos that went with the thing. I finally got it all hooked up and tried the fishing game. Not too bad but still can't compare to the real thing. After playing for a little bit we decided to head to Jacksonville and do some more shopping. WOW that seems really weird to say. We ended up going to Lowes and pricing out a couple of things for the house. Then we went back over to the Petsmart. I asked Neil and Dad to go in and get me a training snack pouch for Sally and I wanted to go look at a new cell phone. I have grown tired of carrying a cell phone and a PDA so I wanted to condense to one if I could. This turned out to be a major adventure. First of all for me cellphones are strange. The last one I remember were the old Brick or bag type phones. So all of these new smart phones are quite intimidating. I walked into the store and told them I wanted to condense, first they wanted to see both of them so they could just move all of the info off of my "PDA phone" and put it on my cell. They weren't getting that the PDA was just that. It wasn't a phone. Finally I got my point across and Laura helped me to pick out a new phone. 2 hours later and I walked out of the store with a new phone. She swore to me that it was easy enough for me to figure out. I sure hope so. After this ordeal Da, Neil, Sally and I headed for the house.
Friday came and we left the house to meet Terry for breakfast. Terry gave me the final speel about the whole "umbilical" training and told me that it started as soon a breakfast was over. So begins the whole process of having Sally with all the time now. OOOOORRRAAAHHH! There is my motivation!!!! After breakfast Terry left for home, and we headed for Camp Geiger. I took Dad to the clinic to meet some of the people that I work with, and show him around a little. Everyone at the clinic were excited to see Sally. This is one of the things that we had talked about at breakfast with Terry. Sally visiting might become a highlight for people when I get comfortable enough to start doing visits. I am going to work with my chain of command to see if Sally and I can start making regular trips to the hospital and visiting the wards. Terry said I should get up with Paul, a Marine that also has a service dog, and maybe this can become a regular thing for both of us to do. If the clinic is any indicator of what to expect form these visits, they should be interesting. Sally comes into a room or a building and everyone starts smiling and the whole atmosphere changes. Everyone seemed to be excited in getting to meet some of my family too. There were a bunch of Chiefs there and Chief Hellmann came up and asked if Sally and I would demonstrate her skills for them. Sally did great and the Chiefs were amazed. They were shocked at how well she behaved. I know I have done this several times but here is another one. THANK YOU TO ALL THE INMATES THAT TRAINED SALLY. Commander Buchanan stood and spoke to my Dad and Neil for a while, and it sounded like they had some pleasant conversations. Afterwards we headed back out for some more public interaction. Last night we stopped at K-mart and walked around. There was a woman and her grandson there that came up and started asking questions. Her grandson really wanted to get out and pet Sally but Grandma kept him at bay explaining that Sally was working and he couldn't pet her. This lady had never heard of a psychiatric service dog before and was amazed at what Sally had been trained to do. She was really interested especially since her husband retired from the Corps not too long ago. I was a little stressful to talk but a lot easier than it would have been 6 months ago.
