The Very Bad Pain Clinic, otherwise known as Rehab always smells of urine. And I hate walking back into its depths. I always feel like I am witnessing something too personal. The first back room has people lying on beds with clean white sheets. They are being rolled and vibrated and tractioned. The next part of the room has people biking and peddling. They are all receiving some kind of therapy.

We have come for the brace clinic. It is the fortieth anniversary of CC's being blowed up in Vietnam. He has had his wheelchair for a week. What I didn't anticipate was that once he got a wheelchair that he would go everywhere in it. It has provided more pain relief than anything we have tried so far. CC wheeled his way through the hospital leaving a swath of smiling folks with his utter abandon. It's like he can run. For the first time ever I don't have to curb my natural pace, in fact, I have to walk fast to keep up with him.

Last night he went to Holly's honor program. Because he could. Because he wasn't in so much pain by the end of the day that he couldn't go anywhere. So we all got to go out together. The Board of Education didn't get the message he was coming though and it took awhile for them to find the door with the ramp that allowed him access. CC sat in the rain with great ferocity of purpose while the handicapped access was located and unlocked.

Today, as we awaited his appointment for a panel to decide if he needed a new leg brace or if the one he had could be made to accommodate his recent weight loss, he wheeled around the therapy room doing wheelies listening to music on his ITouch. Dancing he calls it. A young black woman was peddling hard on a bike. She relocated near us for another peddling exercise. She had on a short metal leg brace and her left hand is drawn with nerve damage. It is as if she has mirror image injury to her body as CC's. CC took out as his earphones as he watched the woman. I knew he was getting ready to talk to her.

"If that's a metal brace, you are eligible for clothing allowance," he tells her. "My hand was all drawn up just like yours when I came home from Vietnam. I figured out that I could stretch my fingers out and lay my head on my hand when I slept to flatten my hand out. You can get money to build a handicapped accessible house. She listens, as does her husband. They thank him. She looks like she might cry. So young. Peddling, peddling.

"There is money for when you purchase cars - they'll pay for cruise control, power windows, power locks. I've got forty years, forty years of working the system. You need to get a service officer. I am only trying to help young veterans. They treated me like shit when I got home from Vietnam."

"Forty years ago today he was blown up," I tell them. And there he sat, dancing with energy, wheeling back and forth, doing wheelies and doing fine. "You are blessed to be alive," the husband says. "I am lucky, but my friend was not. He died."

The panel of people hearing CC's case decided a new brace was in order, one that fit better because refurbishing the old one was as expensive as a new one. They asked if he was married when he came home from Vietnam. No, he wasn't. He married the candy striper who came to his room and took one look at his leg and threw up. But that is another story for another day.

Happy Anniversary CC. I love you.