Really Good News - June 24, 2005

Here is some really good news!

I just got off the phone with Leslie...she's leaving Gainesville right now. Jerry is improving so much every day since the shunt was put in. They are taking him outside in a wheelchair now, he actually got a shower on this table thingy for the first time since he's been there yesterday. He's lifting his arms, legs, hugging the family. He still can not talk, but can mouth words, names, things like that. He's starting to ask questions, couldn't believe that he'd been in the hospital almost two months. He doesn't remember what happened, but now that he is so much more alert, he's feeling the staples from the shunt surgery, point to the pictures, which Roz had hung on the wall, along with all the cards that his friends and family had been sending, she's now able to read them to him, which he finds humorous. The next thing that they are going to do is to put something in his trach that will help him to talk at the same time weaning him off the oxygen. Rehab was not going to accept him, but now that he has gotten so responsive and alert, it's probably not going to be long before he goes straight to rehab. Leslie says that she believes it will still be a couple of weeks before they will allow any visitors outside of the family. That's all for now, but not bad for a Friday. Things are lookin up!!

Please send Jerry emails and cards. You can email him via the hospital, and his family can read the emails to him.

Here is a website for sending e-mail messages to patients at ShandsHospital. According to the site, they deliver the messages with the normal mailhttps://www.shands.org/public/message/default.asp