July 19

Today was a pretty good day for Jeremy. He woke up this morning with a fever of about 102 degrees again, but it was gone by about noon. He spent about three hours in the chair and looked so comfortable and relaxed. The nurses didn't even have to give him any medication to help relax him as they have before. They have been capping off Jeremy's trach a lot lately. They haven't taken it out completely because, in case Jer gets another infection or something, they don't want to have to put it back in to help him out.

Jeremy had a lot of visitors this weekend and seemed to handle them pretty well, which is good. He's still posturing quite a bit but it's in a different way than he originally was. His left leg definitely is affected by this, he held it out stiff almost all the time. It looked very uncomfortable. And sometimes, the posturing makes him pick up his head and squeeze whomever's hand he's holding very tightly. He's making some great progress and we are so proud of him.

We've kind of stopped asking him to squeeze our hands because he's so strong, it hurts! When he's trying to follow our directions, to relax his hands or wiggle his toes, he has quite a tremor. We think this is because his brain is trying to recreate the neural pathways to tell his muscles what to do and those pathways are a little disordered right now. However, he has been able to follow some directions. He was doing great at relaxing his hands for my sister, and he wiggled his toes for me. We know that he can definitely hear us.

Stephen and I are working on getting our dog, Aiden, certified as a therapy dog. Jeremy and the puppy have always had quite a connection, and the doctors say that you never know who or what will trigger something for him. We think it would be great to get the dog in there to see Jeremy. We talked to the doctors this week and they said that as soon as he comes out of isolation (and we get our certification) that we should be able to bring Aiden up. Debi's going to work on finding out some more information from the facility for us as to their requirements.

It was really good to see Jeremy and spend some time with the family. Jeremy's doing really great and we can definitely see a big difference in only two weeks.

Keep praying. God is good.