Friday, December 21, 2007

Welcome to our new blog for updates on Mark. This was suggested to us and we thought we would jump into the 21st Century finally and give it a try. Hope all of you find this convenient, and I hope we can get it off to a good start and keep it going. You may wonder why we decided to call it St. Michael's Soldier, so let us explain. St. Michael is the patron saint of aviators, among others. Before every flight, Mark would recite the prayer to St. Michael. Doing that made him feel comfortable. Mark even has a tattoo of St. Michael on his left bicep, which is very important to him.

Mark was moved to a regular room in the neuroscience unit last night. Finally out of ICU after six very long weeks. He is no longer on morphine unless he is in pain, and has actually not asked for any, even after physical therapy. He was allowed today to start having ice chips in very small increments and proceeded to chew them up and swallow them. The speech therapist ordered these for now and when she returns from Christmas leave, she will reassess. She is from Northeast Ohio and is a graduate of Ohio State University. She and Mark had quite a discussion about OSU football and their mutual hatred of Michigan. It was quite funny, and she was able to get him to talk quite a bit when they hit on this mutual love/hate.

He was also very alert today, much more so than the last week. Being off the pain meds has made quite a difference. He had physical therapy as well and was able to be up in a chair for about an hour and a half with his back brace on, after the therapy session.

He was given a number of Christmas gifts from various organizations. He got a new CD which Debbie put into his player, and he started singing the words to one of the songs. He was also given an iPod Shuffle and we immediately loaded it up with music from his computer (his MP3 player is currently minus a cord) and he was plugged in and lovin' it. He had a phone call from his best friend, P.J. and when we gave him the phone, he said "What's up, a*#hole!" This resulted in howls from all of us. P.J. said it made his Christmas. Then tonight we got a phone call from Jessica, and he was able to talk some to her. It was wonderful. When I got on the phone and spoke to her, he said "Hurry up, I want to say good-bye to Jess." It was more than wonderful.

He still has a really long way to go with the physical things, sitting up, using his hands, learning to walk again, just to name a few, but we have every reason to believe he will accomplish all of it.

So, please keep all those wonderful prayers coming Mark's way. Pray for patience for him and us, if you don't mind. And tune into this new station for all the latest updates. We appreciate it.

Merry Christmas to all of you.

Ann and Rich