Rich saves the day... again.

I think he must park his trusty white steed around the corner, because when Rich valiantly appears, in my hour of need, to rescue me -- as he invariably does, no matter how treacherous the peril I've found myself in on any given day -- his equid friend is nowhere to be found.

This particular debacle was unavoidable. The new aide I hired started yesterday (Monday, 9/9). We discovered, while en route to the MSC to pick up a few remaining items from my office, that she was unable to drive my van. Now, I've been in the van with dozens of people who were new to driving it, but never have I actually been afraid for my life. There was drifting into other (occupied, oncoming) lanes; drifting on to the shoulder, into the grass, against the embankment on Needwood Road; nailing the curb with both passanger-side wheels. No hyperbole, no overstatement -- I was lucky to have made it home.

Obviously, that employment arrangement was not going to work out for either of us -- a decision that left me both back at the employee-search drawing board and without transportation to therapy today.

Enter Rich (amid much trumpeting and fanfare to announce his gallant arrival), who offers to take me, despite having already taken the day off on Friday (9/5) for the same reason. After already missing four days of therapy, I was loathe to miss another. Rich, knowing how

important it is, didn't want me missing any more, either. I didn't even ask him -- he just volunteered. After I'd exhausted all other means of transport and, finding nothing, was resigned to missing yet another day, I was rather morose. As I sat, brooding, he said, simply, "I'll ask Martha," and began tapping away on his laptop keyboard.

Whatever would I do without him? I dread to think.

God bless Martha, his boss, who has been so very generous and understanding!

So, thanks to Sir Richard the Awesome, I made it to therapy today. Cara continued her FES lesson from Friday, instructing Rich on where to put the electrodes on my muscles and how to feel for the muscle contraction, how to program the Empi unit, and how to modulate the e-stim pulse strength.

We've found that I can get up to about 70mA on my leg muscles, but I can't tolerate much more than 40-45 mA on my arms and shoulder or it becomes too painful.