8/17/04 at 6:00 a.m.

I was locked out of the computer room last night so I did not get to type an update. Thank you to Linda (Jess' good friend Curtis' mother) for the update on Sunday. What would our world be like without the love of good friends. We are all connected.

Jess started out with a good day yesterday. We stopped two of the medications. One (Ritalin) was supposed to stimulate Jess' brain to wake him up more. It made him "posture" or "tone" so much that he could not move his arms in comfortable movements. Those words describe an uncontrollable stiffening of the arms and legs set off by the unconnected neurons in the brain and Jess has to work very hard to try to make his limbs do what he wants, to follow commands or relax. With time and medication it goes away. So, in the afternoon the physical therapist was able to get good movement out of his legs and arms after the Ritalin wore off. He could rotate his arms to touch his shoulders and he can almost hold his head up by himself.

Later in the day we noticed his mouth was bleeding. There has been a wire on his braces (from the broken jaw) that will sometimes cut the inside of his cheek. We ended up in the E.R.one night because of it. Well, it happened again and it is very frightening because he is still on the trachea, still in a partial coma and your mouth bleeds a lot. Finally, at 9:00 p.m. the oral surgeon came to the Elk's and fixed the wire, cleaned out the blood clots and assured us he would be ok. The good news is we have an appointment on Friday to take out the arch bars and the trachea! Yippee! We have been waiting for this day for 8 weeks. Jess will be able to get in a therapeutic pool, maybe start to talk (we don't know if the brain has made that connection yet) and we can move him without fear of hitting the trache. The team of therapists and doctors meet today to discuss Jess' goals for the next week...I will keep you informed. Much love and gratitude to you all.
P.S. We are now able to get personal emails again. Thanks, Joey!