Luke Schmitz Survived Iraq

Well the days just keep getting better and better. Many good things happened today that are milestones in Lukes rehab. He moved rooms, meaning no more isolation! He has a roommate who actually has been discharged but had more problems with his knee so was re-admitted. His name is Josh, and has a personality of...well, not sure. Just hard working, hard a$$ and jokes around a lot. But not with Luke, he keeps to himself a lot right now.
He also had his first day of PT downstairs in the Rehab room. Because it was his first day, we could observe, so Derrick and I sat quietly, kind of, and watched. A lot of the work right now is with trunk work and stretching out the muscles. Since he is laying in a bed all day, they want to make sure the leg isnt going to contract and stay slightly forward. Hope that makes sense. For the first time today I saw his 'stump' without the bandages on. Before they unwrapped it (the resident did a crap job on wrapping it this morning, so they wanted to re-wrap it) they asked if he was ok, and if we were ok seeing it. I was actually excited to see what his leg looked like, and suprisingly it looked good. A nice round clean stump. He has stitches rounding a little more posterior the right at the end of the leg. Also his lateral side is stitched all the way up because of shrapnal wounds. He has some open sores that the bandage stuck to and they were a little concerned about that. they said he has a good looking stump and it will heal nicely, soon he will have the sock to shrink the leg down to shape it into a prosthetic.
And here is BIG news. His infection is gone! or thats at least what they were telling us. If his pain was under control, he would be discharged on the 17th. amazing because we were told at least 6 more weeks. Right now he still has lots of phantom pain shooting down his leg (or where it used to be) and isnt off the morphine yet. When he reaches the point of being able to be off the IV pain meds, he will move either to the guest house or the barracks (which are more like one bedroom apts). Luke worked hard today and did very well at PT. Tired him out for the rest of the day, but is ready for tomorrow again! I cant remember anything else to write, plus we went out for drinks tonight at the Riverwalk!