Friday, February 8, 2008

Today marks three months since Mark's accident. As I have said before, it is hard to believe. It's as if we are living a bad dream. We are so grateful that he is making the progress that he has in such a relatively short time. We have been here a month and there has been great improvement in that period. When you think that his first month he was in a coma and fighting to stay alive for two weeks of that four, and then the week in Germany and the three at Walter Reed, where one was in intensive care, his rehab really only started a month ago. It is again amazing.

He was able to be in his wheelchair for several hours again today. He had his PT and stayed in the chair through dinner, which he did even a better job of feeding himself. He had one of his nurses aides in tears of joy when she saw him eating. She has been off for a couple of days and hadn't seen this progress. She was so happy, she brought him a piece of apple pie for dessert which he thought was terrific!

His pain is still pretty intense, but the pain management has improved. They are giving him more medication in an effort to keep him as comfortable as possible as well as increasing the medication for the spasticity. It is imperative that they get his legs straightened and unfortunately that is a very painful process. After all he's been through, it is awful to watch him be in such agony. I think he realizes that it is necessary for him to deal with this to be able to walk again, and that is very much his goal. He wants to do things for himself and is willing to put up with it to feed himself, etc. He's a tough cookie.

We should have a good weekend and be able to spend some down time as the therapies are relaxed a bit. The weather is great and we should also be able to go outside for a while each day.