Joey Jacobsen pours heart into recovery

If you told Joey Jacobsen the scars from brain surgery make his head look like a baseball, the Minden 11-year-old probably would be flattered.

That's how passionate Joey is about sports " playing, scoring, analyzing, watching, cheering " and it's what motivates him as he works to regain the abilities lost six months ago in a near-fatal tree cutting accident in Markleeville.

Carson Valley residents will be able to see Joey's progress for themselves May 23 as the Jacobsen family and friends host a free community-wide "thank-you" barbecue at the Douglas County Fairgrounds from 4 to 8 p.m.

The event is to culminate with a "tree-burning party" with Joey dropping a match on the tree that came crashing down on him Nov. 22 during a wood-cutting expedition with his father Tim and family friend Matt Bernard.

A few weeks ago, Joey, his dad and Bernard returned to the wooded area and retrieved the tree which is now cut up and ready for immolation.

Smith's Food and Drug is donating enough food and beverages for 1,000 guests.

The party is being hosted by Joey's parents Tim and Robbi, older brother Timmy, grandmother Betty Jacobsen, and 22 relatives from North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Colorado.

The barbecue is the Jacobsens' way of thanking the Carson Valley community whose residents opened their hearts to the family after the accident.

Over the course of Joey's recovery, nearly 5,000 people have left messages on his Caring Bridge Web site which has racked up 140,000 individual hits.

After four months in Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno and Oakland Children's Hospital, Joey returned to Minden in March, just in time for his 11th birthday.

School and therapy had to wait a little longer until Joey underwent more surgery. That's where he got the baseball-stitch scar.

He is being fitted with a new electric wheelchair to keep up with his fast-paced schedule of home-schooling, physical and occupational therapy and baseball, baseball, baseball.

On May 5, Joey's fifth-grade teacher Claudia Bertolone-Smith came to Jacobsens' home for a math lesson, his favorite subject.

She began with a sequence game.

"I can already tell I'm going to lose," she said.

And she did " a half-dozen times.

Bertolone-Smith had a bag of colorful manipulatives, and she and Joey reviewed shapes, estimated inches and centimeters, fractions, addition and subtraction.

"You really did a good job on that," she said after Joey tackled subtraction.

The problem was 4,515 minus 327.

"You knew exactly what to do. This is how we started, this is how we'll end," she said.

Joey's mom Robbi Jacobsen, a fifth-grade teacher at Gardnerville Elementary School, said his responses to the math problems were good.

"He doesn't seem to have lost what he had," she said. "He has a little slower retrieval process."

Bertolone-Smith and Minden Elementary teacher Monica Hart are sharing the school-at-home duties.

On May 6, Joey went for physical and occupational therapy at Carson Valley Medical Center in Gardnerville.

"I'm working on strengthening my trunk," Joey said. "Your trunk is in charge of everything."

Sometimes his calves hurt, especially when his therapists help him stand.

But, as Robbi pointed out on Joey's Caring Bridge Web site, "he never says no to anything."

"Think about keeping your knees pointed straight up," said physical therapist Rick Miyashiro.

After a few repetitions on a resistance machine, Joey was poised to pull himself into a standing position with occupational therapist Laure Ebel and aide Mindy Dimitri on each side.

"This was good," Miyashiro said. "I could feel the muscle activity. You couldn't do that three weeks ago."

Ebel set Joey up with a pulley to work his arm muscles.

"My right arm will beat my left arm every time," he said.

"They're trying to work in harmony," Ebel said. "Do you know what harmony is?"

"Peace?" Joey answered.

"They're trying to work in peace and harmony," she agreed.

After therapy, Joey and his dad were on their way to the Douglas-Carson baseball game in Carson City.

Joey is a regular at the high school and Little League games.

He isn't ready to take the field, but he can cheer " and boo the umpires.

"I get that from my dad," he said.