Craig hasn't felt real well the lasy 2-days and is taking it easy today. He complained of a headache this morning and didn't want to do anything. Yesterday I showed him this website and read a lot of the guestbook entires. When he saw the number of hits on the site, he simply said "wow". I asked if he would like to post an entry to the blog, and he wanted to include the following:

Message from Craig
"Thanks to all who have visited me and blessed me. It's very appreciated. Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you. Don't go to Mckay Dee Hospital because the food sucks."

The days are getting really busy. The therapy schedule has been expanded to include a full 2-hours of physical therapy, 1-hour each of speech and occupational therapy, and now some recreational therapy thrown in as well. Add in meal times and naps, and there is not much spare time. Craig is pretty wiped out by dinner and it is getting tough to get him up in the evening to do anything. Many have asked us when we think he will come home. The answer is that we don't know at this point. As long as he continues to show progress and is responding to the therapists, we want to keep him at Mckay Dee. When the time comes to leave, our plan is to set up a workout routine for him involving equipment at home, and additonal professional therapy on an outpatient basis. Right now we just want to push the progress as far as we can in the current environment.

Nothing dramatic to report today, but a good day overall. Craig did well and broke his old record on the treadmill tonight. We are trying to get more initiative and self-directed action from him, instead of simply anticipating and supplying his needs automatically, as we had to do in the past. This is difficult, as he was completely dependent for a long time. He is also getting a little bored with the hospital routine, and we are working with the staff to try and liven things up a little. Lori is going to take him out tomorrow for a Jamba juice (kind of a fruit smoothy thing) to break up the day.

Craig did very well today in all of his workouts, and was even able to walk by himself for some short distances. He seems to have maintained his increased level of alertness and is still responding well. He figured out how to work the TV remote tonight and made us all watch the Spanish language channel. When we asked him if he understood the program, he answered "hola".

Another interesting day today. After a fairly typical morning, Craig refused to participate in any of his afternoon therapies. In speech, he actually gave purposeful wrong answers to the therapist, and then refused to speak to her at all. After a nap, however, he woke up and seemed more alert than ever. he asked about the accident, school, and football, with questions more relevant than in the past. He said that he felt like he was in a dream, and that the present situation did not seem real. His speech was more normal and his thoughts more complete. We felt like he had awakened to a new level of conciousness. It will be interesting to see how this carries through and how he does in therapy tomorrow.

Craig came home again this afternoon, but unlike last week he seemed to know exactly where he was and what was going on. We also took a drive around town, designed to stir his memory. There seems to be a gap of about a month before the accident where he cannot recall events that took place. A degree of retrograde amnesia normal in cases like this, which should improve with time. He has progressed so much this past week that it seems almost greedy to expect another big change this coming week, but we can still hope! He asked for an Arby's Big Montana sandwich tonight, and I promised to bring it to him tomorrow.