The Long Road

Hi Again Everyone,

Liam is doing great. By all accounts, he is doing better than the doctors expected, and his improvements are very encouraging.

So, with the relatively dramatic change in his condition in the last couple of days, I thought I would give a summary of where the little bugger is at (yes Liam, I'm ending the sentence with a preposition).

• He is still mostly asleep. Yesterday was his most active day yet, and he was up for maybe 2.5 hours out of 24.
• Of those 2.5 hours, he was only really responding well and interactive for about 1.5 hours.
• He still has trouble breathing well and controlling his airway. A respiratory therapist visits him 4x a day.
• Most of his movements when he is awake are very slow and deliberate. He moves his left side but his right is much stronger.
• He has feeling on his left side (which is an improvement!), but less than his right. Tyler touched his left toe, and asked Liam if he felt it, and he showed us the thumb-forefinger sign for "a little bit." When Ty touched his right toe and asked the same thing, he nodded a definitive "yes."
• He seemed to attempt to talk last night (this is great!), but what escaped his mouth were a series of whispered mumbles that nobody could understand. It is frustrating, you know he is there, and wants to communicate, but can't.
• He still has a tube that goes into his nose for feeding. When awake, this bugs him. It must feel like the biggest booger ever.

If you haven't read the last couple of postings, please do. Those talk more about the vast improvements he's made. If you were able to stop by and see him last week, his condition now is dramatically better. However, if you were to walk in and see him for the first time since his accident, it would still be a difficult sight to see. He's come a long way, but he still has a long way to go.