Wednesday Evening

Wow, what another great day. To start off with, last night Katie got up three times during the night and went to the bathroom with some help. But, by the end of today she was basically getting up and walking, without a walker, to the restroom and back by herself. It does strike me as odd how easy it is to talk about Katie's bathroom habits, but any of you who know my wife, know that going pee is a very regular event. Therefore, it would figure that it would play into her rehab quite prominently. So, physically Katie is very close to being all thumbs up. She is of course still very weak comparatively speaking, but we have very few issues with her body.

Also on the physical front. The vascular surgeon and the internal medicine dr have both cleared her for rehab. She is being taken off of all of her IV's and is able to now take a pill for all needed meds. This means that we will be headed to the rehab wing of Methodist (it's called Yonkers Rehab), in the next day or so. This is great news, though we will be sad to say goodbye to all our friends on North 3.

While we are excited about Katie's physical improvements, it's the cognitive ones that we are most excited about. Every day she continues to move forward. Today she was rattling off names, places, and events, all with very little hesitation. One therapist was telling Katie about his family and then quizzing her on what he said. This is where it gets though for her. Her very short term memory still has some holes in it. I had to tell her between 10-55,000 times that Sawyer was being watched by Karen and a neighbor (Laura) had Tayler and Aubs. This is good, as she is now very concerned about the well being of the kids, which is a first (since the surgery that is, she's a great mom). She even told Amy her cousin that she felt like she needed to get out of the hospital because she wasn't being a very good mother. We try to alleviate this concern of hers, but the problem is that she asks the same question again 10 mins later. Again, the very short term memory has some holes.

That said, everyone is extremely pleased with her progress. Her vision is still giving us some pause as one eye continues to be a little lazy and we are pretty sure she is seeing double. Please pray for continued healing of her vision as that will be very important to her cognitive rehab.

I'll leave you with this. A nurse told me today that she gets the chills every time she's in the room with Katie as she knows that medically speaking Katie should be dead, or at the very least, in a persisted vegetative state. But instead, she's interacting with the Dr's and nurses trying to see if there is anything she can do to help. I'm actually very thankful that there was really nothing that the Dr's could or can do for Katie, as every time you or I see her we can (I say "can" because we are prone to forget) remind ourselves that we serve an omnipotent God who is still in the business of raising the dead (both physically and spiritually).