Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

Here are some highlights from another outstanding day. David received a lot of work on his left arm, (including the wrist, hand and fingers) again. In fact it seemed like almost all of the therapists worked on it, at least a little. It is not moving on it’s own yet, but we are really praying that it won’t be long.

David walked a lot (more than ever) today with his ‘cool’ walker, and he still looked real good doing it.

He ate enough at all three meals to not have to have his supplemental tube feeding. If he keeps this up for a while he will get the feeding tube taken out of his stomach. Then he will have no more tubes, hoses, monitors or needles coming out of his body!

Tonight we spent a lot of time just hanging out with David. We talked about him, his accident and his recovery. He had lots of questions, and we realized how bad his post accident memory is. He thought that maybe he had been in two accidents, possibly because we have mentioned that he was at Walter Read Army Hospital and Palo Alto VA Hospital. We watched the DVD that his Air Force friends sent him again, and each time we watch it he gives us more details about his time in Turkey, and the friends that he made there. I’m sure that it is good for his memory. He said that he has been praying that he will get to return to the Air Force and to his Incirlik, Turkey base, as well as his friends there. I told him that if it were that important to him, I would also start to pray for that. He also called Daniel Wooten in Turkey, (and woke him up), and they talked for a while. It was the first time that he has talked to a friend from the Air Force. He also talked to his girl friend, Kelli.

As we were leaving, Patty said that she loved him, and waited for him to respond appropriately. Since he has never said (unless he was heavily drugged), “I love you” back, Patty really wasn’t expecting much, but he got this “real” smile on his face as he tried to keep from saying it. He has this fake smile that he gives us when we take pictures, but this was his old “real” smile, and it was exciting to see his face muscles working in a ‘new’ way, that we thought was lost.

Steve