Thursday afternoon

Well, so far I have been able to keep Katie in the dark regarding her B-day party. It's 4:30 and sees sleeping, thinking that I'll be going to get the kids soon to come back and have dinner with her.

She continues to amaze everyone in her therapy sessions. In fact, the hospital has asked if they can use her story as one of their "success stories" to put in some sort of book. Also, the CEO of the hospital has gotten wind of Katie and sent down the hospital's PR rep for a visit.

Today she made brownies in one of her sessions and is excited about eating them tonight with the kids. In a number of the sessions they use games to stimulate Katie both mentally and physically. So, they use card games to stimulate her mind and today they use a bean-bag toss game to work on ballance and addition. So she has to throw the bean-bags while standing on one leg, for example. Then she has to add up the points and see if she beat my score. That's right, she had to play against me. Believe me, it does wonders for our marriage. So, to be fair, I closed one eye, stood farther away, and threw them with my right hand. I still managed to beat her a few times. Before you begin to feel too bad for the sickie, just know that she cheats. Just before I made one of my throws she grabbed my butt. When I turned around she said, "Kyra! (she was the therapist that was closest)". Can you believe that. She tries to distract my toss and then blames it on her therapist. This is what we are talking about when we speak of her higher brain functions, though some might argue that grabbing my rear and blaming it on another woman are "lower" brain functions.

It's been fun to see people who have not had a lot of interaction with Katie through this process come and see her or talk to her on the phone. The other day my Dad was asking me if I felt like Katie's personality had changed at all (which is common with brain injuries). I said, "see for yourself", and handed the phone to Katie. After a 10 minute conversation, Katie gave me back the phone and my Dad was just amazed. He could hardly tell the difference between the old Katie and the one that was talking to him now.

I know some of you may be thinking that it really can't be this good. That all the positive things that I have been posting are just the hopeful longings of a desperate husband. While that is possible, I really don't think that is what is happening. And, the willingness of the hospital to release her backs that up. Throughout this whole blogging thing, I've actually tried to under estimate the good stuff. The fact is, things are usually better than I am letting on. Not that I'm trying to sandbag to garner more support, I'm just making sure that I'm not getting carried away. However, for us here with her all the time, I would say that most would agree that Katie's is 85-90% of her old self. I say this in regards to mentally. Physically she is probably around 50%, but no one is worried about that as we know that will come back quickly now that she is up and about. Actually we are not worried about the mental either, but that, medically speaking, is more up in the air. For those of us who understand God, we know that none of this is up in the air.

Thank you all for all the Birthday post, I know Katie will love to hear them. I'll do my best to read them to her tonight, but considering the amount, I might not get to them all. However, she will read them all, I promise.