We take Jake to Children’s Hospital in Aurora twice a year. This is our third year. It’s always on a Friday, and we have to be there by 9 in the morning. It usually takes us an hour to get there.

It’s intense on the freeway today; everyone is in a hurry, as we all hurtle through space in our metal boxes. Fortunately the traffic is light this morning. We actually arrive at the Hospital in 45 minutes.

Usually all of us go with Jake. We make a day of it somewhere in Denver. This time we’re going to visit the 16th Street Mall and eat at Johnny Rockets.
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We park and walk into the hospital. It feels really good being here. We’ll be here for several hours. We elevate up to the 4th floor and wait to be called into the Muscle Clinic. Once there, we see the main rehab doctor, a Neurologist, and a Neuro-Psychologist. We also see a Social Worker, a Physical Therapist, and a representative of MDA. On the way out, we stop at the lab downstairs, and Jake has his blood drawn to check for his vitamin D level and his thyroid functioning.

By the time we leave, four hours and some minutes later we have heard that his muscles are still doing much better than expected. And everything else is okay too – except for the DMD of course. Jake’s a healthy little guy. We also began the process of hooking him up with other boys with DMD. He needs friends who are going through what he’s going through. They also gave us a script for a new lightweight stroller for when he gets tired walking.

The people we saw at the Muscle Clinic must be really frustrated. There is nothing they can do about the DMD, nothing at all. All they can do is make it more comfortable for the boys who have it and slow down its progress so that it takes longer to kill them.
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After we leave, we drive all the way into Denver on Colfax, the longest city street in the world. We don’t start at its eastern beginning, and we don’t go all the day to its ending in the west. We just take it from the hospital to the center of town and the mall. Colfax is not your typical city street. On the way, we see lots of naked dancing places, lots of pot shops, lots of tattoo parlors, and lots of darkness. I wouldn’t want to be there at night, not with my family.

The 16th Street Mall, on the other hand, is full of light and fun. The boys love the free buses that take us from one end of the mall to the other and back. When we get tired of riding the buses, we eat at Johnny Rockets. We all have burgers and fries. Good food, although no one sings to us this time. The food is bit expensive, but what the heck.

Back in our box, on the freeway again. I think we all feel the same. We just want to make it home safely. Hurtling through space again, we keep going, thankfully watching the traffic thin out as folks turned off into their own little cities on the way to ours.

Finally we leave the freeway, drive down Table Mesa, and then turn into our street and park in front of our house. We’re home.