a month has passed

Who would have thought we would still be here after a month. During this time our only concern is making Beverly comfortable, safe, well cared for, and secure in her family's love and the love and prayers of all of her friends across the country. Janie, Pauletta or Chris has been with her all the time, encouraging her and making her smile. Even the move to the respiratory critical care unit didn't satisfy Beverly's desire to "get this show on the road". She makes small progress most days but is having problems with the weaning process off the ventilator. Yesterday she could only go about 30 minutes before she became too tired to continue. When her speaking valve was in she said she knows how important this is but just gets too tired and feels she needs to go back on the assisted breathing. We will hope for one hour today.


We have been advised that moving her directly into a specialty Spinal Cord Rehabilitation facility is probably the best action but few of them take patients still on a ventilator. And the cost of the best of these facilities is about $5000 per day. Her expected stay is 90 days. We are hoping to find one of these facilities that will accept a "scholarship" patient, since her insurance will not cover this. If any of you know anyone, anywhere who can help, please email us. Chris, Pauletta and Leonard have been working on this but nothing has materialized yet. While everyone would prefer this facility be in Oklahoma, we want her to have the very best rehabilitation possible no matter where it is.

How about some good news now? Yesterday during her physical therapy session she was able to feed herself some apple sauce! There is a special band that fits around her palm and helps hold a spoon. With very little assistance she was able to get this up to her mouth. Then she held a cup of juice and brought it up to her lips and drank out of the straw! The therapist were very pleased with this progress. She is tired today but we hope to practice this more today. She is off the feeding tube during the day but hasn't been impressed with hospital food. Pauletta sneaked in a latte yesterday and she really enjoyed that!