{Karlton Bontrager}

An “anti ISIS dining room” Karlton is slowly emerging out of his cocoon and letting himself be seen there from time to time. And that’s where I found him Sunday morning when I arrived. Soon Robert and Vailoa had him walking down the halls into the recreation room and back to the room – perhaps two-tenths of a mile. Karlton’s walking is improving everyday, and as long as it’s not with Mom alone, he doesn’t mind walking several times during the day.

Karlton has taken up texting on his mobile phone. He seems to enjoy sending and receiving messages. In fact, when he is doing that, he has yet to complain of any pain in his eye. Is it mind over matter … pleasure covering pain … whatever it is, it keeps him from boredom and the occasional complaining.

Late afternoon, a nurse decided to take whoever was interested to the movies. Karlton said he would go depending on what show they were going to go. It was decided the group would go watch “About A Boy” starring Hugh Grant – and at first Karlton said he wasn’t going, but after some persuasion, he changed his mind. I think it was a great learning experience for him because he realized that sitting still in a fairly comfortable chair at the movie theater for two hours was much too long and much too painful for him. We helped him stand up for a while, put sheepskin cushion on the chair for him, and I even massaged him a bit, but it was still not comfortable. Now he knows that it will be a wee bit yet before he can go watch rugby games with his mates and we won’t have to be the ones to try to discourage him from going.