UPDATES
January 17 2003 Update
We really appreciate all your thoughts, prayers, cards, gifts and visits. They keep our hopes up and give us strength to keep going. The gifts we received on Tuesday evening astonished us. The gift card for King Soopers, the cash and the certificate to the “Black-Eyed Pea” were overwhelming, staggering. Your generosity and caring are truly incredible.
Marla has good days and non-so-good days, partly due to her agitation, which in turn is a result of improvement in her level of consciousness. She is currently at a stage described as “agitated, aware, confused and unconsolable.” That is, she is becoming aware of the extent of her injuries and her inabilities, which leads to feelings of great anguish, expressed in several ways, including physical agitation.
Yet she continues to improve, and we credit your prayers and support for that. Improvement in her physical condition will be most directly observable. She is standing and pivoting from chair to bed or exercise mat. Four different times, she stood at the parallel bars (two hand rails about waist height) and took 2 - 4 steps, with help moving her right foot. Her appearance is much improved without the tube in her nose. She is being fed through a tube directly into her stomach. Her arch bars (like heavy duty braces on her teeth) are to come off in the next few days. This will make her much more comfortable and more rapid progress can be expected in decreasing the size of her tracheostomy tube, leading to its removal.
We appreciate your understanding that she is easily overstimulated and upset, requiring that you check with the Nurse’s Station before visiting her. We are very concerned about your driving this far, if you then find that she can’t receive visitors at that time. We’ve tried to identify a means to avoid this, but haven’t found one yet. We’re told that familiar faces and voices are critical in increasing her rate of improvement, within the limits of her tolerance for stimulation–which varies from day to day. So again, we appreciate your understanding and your willingness to keep trying. Her recovery is supported extensively by friends like you, and we can’t thank you enough.