Aug 9 (Thursday)- 9pm

Jeannette had a very good day today. She continues to spend long hours off the ventilator and continued working on her speech valve. She is able to talk though it's a whisper.  From our perspective, though, her whispers are coming through loud and clear and its great to hear her!

Her big news is that she had surgery early in the evening and her surgeon is very pleased with her "gut" and has begun the process of closing her abdomen.   She put in a mesh graft made out of pig skin, and things are looking good and we are all pleased with how things look. I know we all look forward to the opportunity to tease her about this. This was a very big step that the surgeon felt confident enough in her progress to begin this important part of her healing. Jeannette is also moving both her arms - a great sign that she is getting her strength back. As Sam spoke with the surgeon she remarked that today is the three week mark. The surgeon marveled at how far Jeannette has come and we all feel that way.

As for Rich, he had a great day.   He handled some visitors, talked up a storm, and ate more, chatted a lot, and all-in-all continued to get better.   His knee is bothering him some, and they took an xray of it to make sure nothing was missed and we will have the results of that soon.  But other than that, there is not a lot of "news" about Rich, other than he's doing some complaining now and then.   Ah...well, that's a very very very good thing to be able to say.-John