Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Kelsi's body is well on its way to complete recovery. The swelling decreased substantially during the night last night. The doctors explained that the body holds onto water very aggressively after a substantial trama has occurred. Once the body realizes that it has a steady supply of food and water, it will release the excess stored water. Most of the observable swelling is gone, with just a few places that need a couple more days to normalize.

She spent about half of the day in a deep sleep. It was a much needed, since she slept only one hour during the night and spent the remaining hours moving arms and legs in an unconcious effort to keep them going. During her waking hours she opened her eyes many minutes at a time and continued to work her arms and legs. She still only moves the right arm very little and the right leg moves much less than the left.

She still needs 2 forms of life support - breathing and feeding. Over the past 48 hours they have started to wean her off the respirator. Her presure setting was at 12 just 2 days ago. It was decreased to 10 yesterday and 8 today and she is still looking good. The hope is that she will be breathing totally on her own by Friday and the respirator will no longer be needed. The feeding tube will take longer because, once concious, she will not be able to eat enough to give her the nutrition she needs. As she is able to eat more, the feeding tube will become less important. The feeding tube is not a great concern because with a simple surgery it can be moved out of her sinuses and into her abdomen. This will clear her throat of obsturctions. She still has mucus left in her lungs, but it is decreasing and expected to completely go away in the hear future.

The biggest difficulty facing Kelsi is the progress toward conciousness. She seems to increase in awareness each day, but conciousness is difficult to measure. Yesterday she seemed to follow commands better than today, but there is some thought that she has grown tired of the "Move your fingers and toes" and "Squeeze my hand" types of commands, but isn't able to do much else until the life support tubes are cleared from her throat. It seems that more time is needed fixing the things that are damaged on the inside before she will be able to work on communication.

The faith and prayers of all have been the biggest asset to helping Kelsi's recovery. We are absolutely convinced, that though slow, her progress from day to day has been greatly enhanced by the faith, prayers and service that all have rendered by all.