We have officially completed our 33rd trip to Shriners Children’s Greenville.

I do not know how many of the handful of you who read these posts pay attention to the titles I tack onto the Greene Does Greenville series, but more often than not, those titles come to me during the trip itself. Usually it is a quote, a moment, some random little benchmark, or just something that happens that sticks in my head and makes me go, yeah, that’s the one.

This time around, I had a few different possibilities in mind as the trip was happening. I thought I had one. Then I came up with another. But by the time we were home, I knew exactly what the title for this entry had to be.

New Routines.

And honestly, that pretty much covers the whole trip.

This was our first time back in Greenville since Harrison had his cast removed and then went through those few days of intensive therapy back in January. That trip was rough on him, rough on us, and just rough all around. Since then, we have had a little over three months at home. Three months of school, therapy, growing, figuring things out, and Harrison just being Harrison.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, things changed.

A Kid Who Does Not Stop

If you follow us on Facebook or social media at all, then you may have seen little glimpses of it here and there. We still do not share a ton, and I doubt we ever will, but it has been hard not to share some of this lately because the kid has absolutely turned it on.

He does not stop walking.

He does not stop moving.

He wants to be outside. He wants to walk the driveway, the yard, the road, anywhere and everywhere he can go. And the crazy part is, this was not even really our reality six weeks ago.

It took him a while after January.

When we left Greenville back then, the original plan was that Harrison would be wearing his new KAFOs all the time, including all day at school. That was the goal. That was what Dr. Hyer wanted. But for a couple of reasons I will not get into here, Harrison ended up getting more breaks from them. That also led to us putting him back in his AFOs, which he has worn in some form since he was an infant.

And once he was back in those AFOs, once he was not as limited in his movement, he started finding himself again.

There was a real shift.

A real lightbulb moment.

Honestly, it happened while Jenna and I were in New York for a few days for her birthday, because apparently, being away from Mom and Dad was all the motivation somebody needed to start walking around nonstop. Since then, it has just kept building. He keeps getting stronger. His endurance keeps improving. His tolerance keeps climbing. He just keeps going.

It was going so well, in fact, one of Harrison’s therapists reached out to Dr. Hyer, letting her know how well Harrison was doing, and well before she was able to see him for herself, he graduated from her original plan, and was cleared to officially wear AFOs during the day, and KAFOs at night.

So going into this appointment, there was definitely some excitement mixed in with the usual nerves. We were eager to see Dr. Hyer’s reaction to what Harrison was now doing.

Of course, being Harrison, he did not exactly show off for her.

He never does.

The Reality of Medical PTSD

I do not know how often I have actually said this outright on here, but the truth is, Harrison has some very real medical PTSD from everything he has been through. That is completely understandable. I do not think anybody who has worked with him has ever held that against him, and they have always tried to work around it as best they can.

But he has always fought appointments.

He does not want to stand for Dr. Hyer.

He does not want to walk for Dr. Hyer.

He does not want her touching him.

This visit was no different.

By the time she came in, he was already kind of tired, already over it, and absolutely not interested in participating. But this is one of the reasons I trust Dr. Hyer as much as I do.

And I mean that completely.

I trust her explicitly with Harrison.

She does not see him all the time, but she watches. She listens. She pays attention to every little thing she can get in the time she has. She notices things even when he is fighting her on everything, and we are just trying to calm him down enough for her to even check him.

One of the biggest goals after surgery last fall was his knees. His extension. His stability. His range of motion. That is a major focus. And even with him throwing an absolute fit, she was still able to pick up on what she needed.

In fact, one of the best details from the visit came afterward in her notes. While we were all focused on trying to settle him enough for her to examine him, she noticed that when he was kicking and fighting, he was extending his knees fully under his own power.

Which, in the scheme of things, is kind of amazing.

He was showing her what she needed to see without ever meaning to.

That is Harrison in a nutshell.

A Band-Aid That Carried More Weight Than It Should

Before Dr. Hyer came in, we had already seen one of the assistants. We gave her the usual rundown and also told her the latest update, which was basically this:

Harrison is everywhere, and he is exhausting.

That morning, before the appointment, we had actually gone to a coffee shop and sat outside for a little bit. We had coffee, pastries, chai, and a really nice slow start to the day. And because Harrison is now Harrison on the move, he got a little too fast for himself on the sidewalk, stumbled, and scraped his knee.

So there we were, walking into Shriners with a five-year-old with a new bright Band-Aid on his knee, looking a little red-faced, but no worse for wear.

And honestly, I think Dr. Hyer appreciated that more than she ever would have openly admitted.

Not because he got hurt, obviously. But because this is the kind of thing we have fought so hard for. This was the outcome. This was the goal. A kid who is up and going and active enough to scrape his knee like any other little boy.

That sounds simple on the surface.

It is not.

Because if you peel that back even a little bit, it carries a whole lot of weight.

We have gone from the NICU, where I did not know how we were going to change his diaper or how he was going to sit in a chair, to now having a kid who thinks he is indestructible, wants to go faster than he should, and ends up needing a Band-Aid on his knee because he is busy being a little boy.

That is a lot.

And I know this was not even the first Band-Aid-on-a-knee moment we have had lately. It might have been the second or third in the last few weeks. But it still hits.

Something as simple as a Band-Aid on a knee can carry a ridiculous amount of emotional weight.

Meeting Dr. Lawing

After Dr. Hyer, we met with Dr. Lawing, our new spine specialist.

We had only had one Zoom call with her before this, so this was really our first proper visit. And honestly, it went really well.

The spine is still one of those things that hangs out there as a source of stress and uncertainty. It probably will be for a while. There is always that underlying concern that if things progress too much, then certain interventions become necessary, and that is never easy to sit with.

But this did not feel like an appointment where we were walking into immediate bad news or some urgent next step.

It felt measured.

She checked Harrison over, looked at his legs, acknowledged how much more active he is now, and asked the kinds of questions you want a doctor to ask. Things like whether he gets short of breath, whether he seems to struggle breathing, how he handles activity, and whether his endurance changes. Since one of the biggest concerns with scoliosis is how it can affect continued lung development, those questions mattered.

And when we really stopped and thought about it, the answer was no.

Tired, sure.

Worn out, absolutely.

But short of breath? Breathing hard? Not really. Not in a way that has stood out to us.

We got fitted for a new TLSO and will head back next month to pick that up and do X-rays. But for now, it is more maintenance mode there, too. Keep working. Keep getting stronger. Keep increasing the time he wears the brace.

More than anything, we walked away with a lot of anxiety eased.

And I really liked her.

That is worth saying too.

There have been a lot of appointments over the years where people have mostly talked around me or directly to Jenna, as if I were just kind of there, taking up space. That was not the case here. Dr. Lawing talked to both of us. I felt part of the conversation. That mattered to me because that’s been more of a rare occurrence than the norm.

Dr. Pete was wonderful, and there are things he said over the years that I will probably repeat forever. But if we were going to have to transition after his retirement, it is hard to imagine a better fit. She already feels like a natural piece of Harrison’s team.

The Trip Itself Felt Different

But the appointments are only part of why this one felt different. To really explain the rest of it, I need to back up a little.

Because the title for this entry, “New Routines,” did not just apply to what happened in the exam rooms. It covered the whole trip.

New routines could honestly be a whole post by itself.

Because for the first time in five years, the flow of this trip felt very different.

Since Dr. Lawing has her clinic day on Mondays, and Dr. Hyer is able to see us on Mondays as well, our appointments are now on Mondays instead of Fridays. That means instead of me working Thursday, then us rushing out that evening and dragging into Greenville well past midnight for a Friday morning appointment, we now leave early Sunday and have the whole rest of the day to settle in.

And let me tell you, that alone feels like a game-changer.

We took a few detours between construction and traffic delays on the drive down, so it took a little longer than normal, but it still felt calmer. Less frantic. Less exhausting. Writing this the day after, I am not nearly as physically or emotionally wiped out as I usually am after one of these trips.

And after five years of the same exhaustive routine, the change in this different schedule is noticeable.

Plus, because we got there earlier, Harrison got pool time.

Which was a huge win.

The boy has been missing his water.

We got in the pool, let him stand on the steps, let him move around, and on a whim, I thought, let’s see what happens if I stand you on the bottom here in the shallow end. Sure enough, he was able to stand with his nose above water and take a few steps toward me before jumping.

He was walking on the bottom of the pool.

That was a cool moment.

A really cool moment.

And it was something we were able to tell Dr. Hyer later when she asked about him walking barefoot. So that whole little pool session ended up being more meaningful than we had anticipated or expected.

Harrison Knows the Routine Too

Then Monday morning happened, and this was maybe one of my favorite parts of the whole trip.

We had a later first appointment, so there was no rushing around. We got packed, checked out of the hotel, and just let Harrison kind of move.

We opened the hotel room door and let him walk out on his own.

He knew exactly where to go.

He walked down the hall, turned toward the elevators, waited for us to hit the button, walked into the elevator when the doors opened, waited while we rode down, then walked out into the lobby and turned in the correct direction to head for the front door.

From the hotel room to the parking lot, he navigated the whole thing by himself.

We did not direct him.

We did not hold his hand.

We did not tell him where to go.

We just followed behind him.

And that was kind of wild.

It really drove home just how familiar all of this is to him too. He knows these places. He knows this process. He knows where he is and where he is supposed to go.

Same thing at Shriners.

He knew where to go there, too.

Now, to be clear, knowing where to go did not mean he wanted to go there. He definitely tried to make a break for it once or twice and use an escape route when we were letting him walk from room to room. But still, he knew.

And even the small stuff is changing.

Height and weight have always been a struggle because that often seems to be the first clue to him that, oh no, this is a medical appointment. That is usually where the fight begins.

This time? Best he has done, arguably ever.

He stood straight for height.

He tolerated the scale.

He did not really fight it.

Now, he, of course, changed attitudes once he saw Dr. Hyer, as I said, but we’ve been trying to reassure him that these appointments are just checkups and nothing was going to happen. Tolerating having his height and weight taken is hopefully a step in a positive direction.

Year Six

We have been doing this for five full years now.

Five years of trips to Greenville. Five years of appointments. Five years of routines, waiting rooms, brace fittings, hard conversations, hopeful conversations, long drives, hotel rooms, coffee stops, elevators, tears, victories, and all the things in between.

Our first trip was in April of 2021.

So in a lot of ways, Trip 33 marks the beginning of year six.

And somehow, it feels right that year six begins with new routines.

Not a reset.

Not a refresh.

An evolution.

A new pattern.

A new chapter.

We are heading into a season that will include kindergarten and all kinds of new changes, and it feels fitting that the Greenville side of life is shifting, too. Sundays instead of Thursdays. Mondays instead of Fridays. Pool time before appointments. A new spine doctor. A kid who can navigate the hotel better than some adults probably could. A kid who keeps getting stronger, keeps growing, and keeps proving people wrong.

Trip 34 next month should be a relatively uneventful one, at least in theory. The trip will be mostly brace pickup, X-rays, a few brace adjustments, and the usual long day that comes with that. Trip 35 in August will be the next big one, and I am sure that will come with all kinds of nerves tied into kindergarten and everything else.

But Trip 33?

Trip 33 was unexpectedly a cornerstone visit.

Unexpectedly meaningful.

Unexpected in all the right ways.

And more than anything, it made it clear that we are in a new chapter now.

That is exciting.

And after everything it took to get here, I think we are allowed to sit with that for a minute.