Today the speech therapist (Terry) who we like and awful lot, was working with Joanne. She was feeding Joanne ice chips which she was chewing up and swallowing. So Terry decided to try to cap her trach and see what would happen. The few things that capping the trach can do are allowing Joanne to...

Ok, here's the deal: Joanne's new neurologist came to see her today. Looked a the MRI, the EEG and did some tests (basically involving pinching Joanne hard to see if she would respond to pain) and the long and the short of it is that she expects Joanne to have strong recovery including use of mu...

Joanne has been breathing on her own for the last half an hour for the first time since she came to the hospital. She is still on a vent to keep her airway open but the breathing is all her. The really good news is that she might be able to avoid a tracheostomy. That would be huge because it wo...

I can't tell you how badly I have wanted to write this post over the last 12 days. But today I can tell you the we have good news! Joanne is waking up. She is off the medication that kept her in a coma so we are getting to see little signs of healthy brain activity, of life! Here's a list of wha...

Joanne is wearing white cotton boxing gloves. There is no other way to describe them. The nurses are afraid that she will go after some of the many tubes, hoses and wires that are running in and out of her body. She has also put her boxing-gloved right hand to the incision in her head a time o...