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Thank you for your continued prayers! Be sure and let me know if you want removed from/added to this ping list.

Here's the latest update from Tom, Ian's dad:

January 19, 2007 at 12:05 AM CST

Sorry it's been such long time since I updated the site.

Ian continues to improve. His long cast was cut off last week and his mobility has improved. Following PT yesterday, he no longer uses his walker and he is moving around the house pretty much without assistance.

Speech and language continue to be his primary challenges from a cognitive perspective. He still has difficulty recalling things without prompting, though he is making progress. He also struggles with problem-solving and with following more complex series of instructions. Sometimes we think he's doing great, and other times we worry that he's not getting better. I guess the only thing we can really do is work with him and pray really hard. It's worked so far, so there's no reason the power of prayer can't keep on working!

Ian is really enjoying his gradual return to normalcy. He has enjoyed going to church the last two Sundays and was really happy to see all his friends, both children and adults. He keeps reminding us that he wants to get back to preschool as soon as he can, because he definitely wants to see all his friends there (did you hear that, Harvey?). We're hoping to get Ian up to the High School so he can see all of his teachers before they finish their class for the semester--I guess that means we have to do it tomorrow!

Next week we have appointments with the Neurosurgeon and the Neurologist, and I think maybe he'll get his cast off as well. I'll let you know how all of that goes.

Thanks for your continued prayers.

Tom and HJ

I apologize for not getting these updates out sooner.

Here's one of Tom's recent posts:
January 28, 2007 at 08:18 PM CST

Well, it’s been an eventful week, filled with mostly good news.

On Monday, we visited with Ian’s neurosurgeon, Dr. Albright. We went into the exam room and put Ian on the table. When Dr. Albright came in, he sat in the chair at the end of the table and just looked at Ian for several minutes. Then, his face broke into a big smile. He conducted his examination of Ian, checking his strength, asking him questions (and fielding all sorts of questions and comments from Ian during the process) and observing his behavior. He then asked Heatherjane and me how we felt about Ian’s recovery so far. We told him we were very happy about Ian’s recovery so far, but we were also concerned about some of the cognitive issues he continues to have. We asked him about the implications of the 50% impingement of the internal carotid artery on the right side of his brain now and in the future. In addition, we asked him how he would characterize Ian’s recovery thus far, and how he would characterize Ian’s prognosis.

Dr. Albright told us that he was very pleased with Ian’s recovery, and that instead of my “pretty good,” he would call it “excellent”. On the issue of the carotid artery, he had excellent news—he doesn’t believe there will be any issues for Ian now or in the future. From a prognosis perspective, he said that based on his recovery so far, the prospects are good, but it’s still essentially a coin toss relative to how fast and far his recovery will go. We appreciated his candor, but it sure would have been nice to hear something more definitively positive. However, we’ve already seen the power of prayer, so we’re going to continue to pray that the coin toss will be resolved in Ian’s favor. We’ll see Dr. Albright again in March or April.

On Thursday, we visited Ian’s neurologist, Dr. Stafstrom. When he walked into the room, he was clearly stunned. The last time he saw him, Ian was in the throes of a grand mal seizure brought on by hyponatremia (low sodium), and was being transported back to the PICU. The intern who conducted the initial examination was also surprised—she told us that after reading his file, she never expected to see the boy she saw in the exam room.

After conducting his examination, during which he fielded a myriad of questions from Ian about what he was doing, Dr. Stafstrom was clearly pleasantly surprised. He told us that Ian’s recovery thus far was far beyond his expectations, and that in many ways, Ian was “off the charts.” We’re not sure exactly what he meant by that, but we’re pretty sure it’s a good thing. He also suggested that we have Ian get a neuropsych exam, to establish a baseline against which we can measure his recovery going forward. He told us that the various neurological issues Ian is experiencing, like hypersensitivity to light, sound and smell, short-term memory, problem solving, dysnomia (inability to find words), etc., are fairly typical of this stage of recovery from traumatic brain injury. He reminded us that it has only been six weeks since Ian’s injury (five since the seizure incidents), and that it is still very early in the process. Based on the pace of Ian’s recovery so far, Dr. Stafstrom is optimistic that he will continue to make quick progress, though with brain injuries it’s never a sure thing.