Thursday

Continued good progress the last couple of days.  As Paul Hohn noted, Steve has started some walking rehab.  On Wednesday, Steve continued with his progress walking.  He did about twice the distance on Wednesday as he had done on Tuesday.  Steve continues to have several rehab sessions per day including OT, PT, speech, and respiratory therapy.

The biggest advancement over the past few days is that they have started to ween Steve off the ventilator. On Tuesday Steve was removed from the ventilator for 30 minutes and breathed on his own.  Wednesday, Steve did 1.5 hours on his own.  The plan for the remainder of the week was to continue longer sessions without the ventilator.  I spoke to the respiratory therapist supervisor Wednesday and he said he hopes to have Steve off the ventilator early next week.  After he is breathing on his own they can start looking at removing the trachea tube which could possible happen as early as next week also.  This would be very beneficial to Steve as it would help him rehab his speaking and would give Steve more mobility.

Steve has really been enjoying all the well wishes via cards and emails that he has received.  He also seems to thrive on the personal visits that he gets from family and friends.  Keep it up!

I was able to capture Steve playing the harmonica and singing along to "Moonshiner" with Paul the other day. Steve wanted the video shared so people can see his progress.  

Todd Jinkins