Thursday, April 9th

Tim walked 160 feet with a walker during physical therapy today. Many of the hospital staff stopped what they were doing to watch him walk in the hallway. Everyone is amazed at how quickly he is progressing. He is making noticeable improvement every day. He is still weak, and these walks really exhaust him. The hospital told Donna that they are keeping Tim until Monday, then re-evaluating his condition. Tim really wants to go home, so this will not be good news to him. But it's good news to us. Every day he can stay at the hospital, is another day of physical therapy and strength gained. His speech is also improving. He clearly has a speech impediment due to the weakness on the right side of his face. Even though he is getting better at talking, his thought process is off. He talks a great deal about work, as if we were customers or business associates. We just agree with whatever he is saying, it's less frustrating for him. He enjoys visitors most of the time, but tires quickly. Tim is no longer on a liquid diet. He can eat whatever he wants, and needs the calories for the physical therapy. However, he doesn't have much of an appetite. He still has the feeding tube in his abdomen, but they are just using it to administer medication. His Neurosurgeon, Dr. Silva, said that it will be another month before he will return the skull flap. It will take this long for all the brain swelling to subside.

10:00pm - Donna called me to let me know that at around 6:PM this evening Tim began understanding his situation and retaining it. He has kind of been in a fog from time to time. But now he seems clear. He looked at himself in the mirror and they talked about his head injury. Tim called up a friend from work and told him that he's just finding out what happened to himself. He had a few visitors after this point and was able to tell them what happened to him, and have real conversations. Tim was able to tell who the President currently is - something he could not do this morning. I am hopeful that this awakening is permenant. Time will tell.