Lots of progress!

What a great day.  After a good hour sleep in the afternoon.  Lara did so much!  Now that they don't have her on any of the sedation drugs, Lara is starting to come back to where she was on Wednesday/Thursday of last week before we had the vasospasm scare.

With the ventilator out (they took that out this morning remember), Lara can now talk again.  It takes some good listening, and sometimes hand gestures, but she does use her voice.  Of course the first thing she says when they take that tube out much to our surprise is not "Where's my great sister Lacy?"  but is, "Where's Justin?"  Justin had to go in to work today.  Though we all know his heart was aching to be with Lara.

She did some of her respiratory exercises.  Not always wanting to.  The x-ray of her lungs showed "gunk", as they told her, more than there was yesterday.  Suck in on this, blow out on that, now just wrap your lips and hold it.  She finally at one point took a tube out, looked at me and said, "I need to drink a lot of water."  She did too.  But no drinking yet.  She hasn't passed a swallow test yet.  So a little swab to wipe around her mouth, she chews on it a bit and feels better.

Physical Therapy was very exciting today.  It is amazing to see Lara take each little new step.  We all want to be there to see her wriggle that toe, oh now it's her ankle, oh my goodness she lifted her leg.  We celebrate her success as though she has won a major award.  When two weeks ago we wouldn't have thought twice about her little toe.

The physical therapist got Lara to use a lot of her own strength to get to a seated position on the side of the bed.  She even sat on her own a little.  She has to work on balancing her self, she leans still.  While she was sitting she told me to "pull 'em back".  The curtains, she got to look outside.  Granted it was the windows to the next building over, but there was sunlight.  She was so tired the therapist was thinking this would be good.  But Lara wanted to sit in a chair.  Once the therapist helped her to stand, she told her it was ok to sit slowly.  But Lara didn't.  She was standing for a good 60-90 seconds.  (Sounds crazy, but that was such a long time!)  Lara would have her sassy moments.  The nurse had her hand on her shoulder and could see the face she was making.  So she asked her, "Lara, does your shoulder hurt when I touch it?"  Lara says, "No, I just don't like people touching my shoulder."  Atta girl!  After Lara sat in her chair, the therapist was saying how much better she was doing than last week when we tried this the first time.  Lara sat in the chair a good 20 or so minutes.  She was even swinging her left foot and lifting her left leg a little.  Enough use and good enough stability in standing that the therapist was throwing words around like...walker cane.  You know not the regular walkers, but the big cane things that have "the claw" instead of just one baby foot.  Holy cow I got excited.  How cool would that be.  But we'll see.

Another big step was the drain tube in her head.  That is there to drain the blood and fluids from her brain.  They raised her to 25.  What that means basically is they are looking to see if her brain can self regulate the pressure in her skull surrounding her brain.  If it is still draining too much, then it could just need to drain more.  If it regulates it self, we MAY get it taken out as early as tomorrow!  Or if it needs to drain, and can't regulate itself, they will have to take Lara back into surgery to put in a shunt.  Not exactly ideal.

Towards the end of the evening she was being pretty funny.  I'm not sure how much is intentional, how much is us just being giddy, and how much is her cocktail of drugs, but it was nice to laugh.  She's getting some personality.  That part is fun.  To see her ask for blackberry ice cream, her cell phone and tell me she can't go shopping on black Friday because she has to work...it may seem silly, most of it she doesn't remember a few moments later.  But man it sure is nice.