April 23rd at 9:45 a.m.

It’s finally the weekend! We have been so busy that we forgot to update the website to let everyone else know what is going on in our lives. It has been many months since I’ve given the update, my Mom usually does it. I have been here for the last 5 weeks participating in the care and recovery of Jess. There are many new things that have happened since I’ve been here. One significant change is Jess got a new wheelchair, which seems to be helping with his "tone" (abnormal adrenaline to the muscles). The PT therapist, Tami, has been seeing great physical response from Jess, particularly in moving his head from left to right on command (22 times last session!). This is awesome because Jess had been pulling his head to left quite hard due to the tone. This means that his neck muscles are getting stronger, which has helped with his head control when in a sitting or standing position.

I have been taking Jess to high school 3 times a week. We go from 1:00 to 4:30 and participate in many activities during that period. The therapists at school have been working with an eye-gaze board for communication. We have seen positive responses from Jess. An eye-gaze board is a rectangle piece of see through plastic with dimensions of 2 ft by 1ft. They put the word “yes” on one side and the word “no” on the other side. We get in front of Jess and have him focus on our eyes in the center of the board and then ask a yes/no question. He can consistently answer these questions by gazing to the right or left to indicate with a yes or no answer. (He got nine answers out of ten correct...the one incorrect answer was a question asking if the year was 2005. Jess said “no”. He must still think it is 2004.) Answering questions is very exciting because we have established a form of communication which seems to be consistent. Jess is taking small steps but we continue to be amazed by the effort he puts in each day.

My dad Chris has gone back to work doing construction full time. Between the five of us (Chris, Pam, Joey, Grandma and Grandpa), Jamie and Jahara on the weekends, the therapists, and of course all the special friends who have been devoting their time (there are too many to name), Jess is getting the best possible chance to come back to us. We all function as one big force of energy and this in itself should be enough to help him recover in time. Thank you all for your unrelenting persistence and faith! Until next time, have a great week. Joey