Monday and Tuesday, December 11th and 12th

Hello,

Tori's first two days of the week have been pretty good. She has slept well and her agitated episodes seem to have lessened a little. Tori has also eaten pretty well as she had almost a full yogurt on Monday night and then had chunky peanut butter, and apple sauce with crunched up rise cakes and cinnamon mixed in from Meredyth on Tuesday afternoon. Meredyth then did a variety of mouth exercises with Tori. Tori responded very well and when I fed her yogurt she has closing her lips entirely around the spoon as instructed. Meredyth also showed Tori about 14 pictures and asked questions while holding two of them up. Tori picked the correct card based on the question asked each time. Most were Christmas themed.

Tonight Tori's new home nurse stopped by. We had to switch home care providers because Tori's insurance company dropped the previous one... So I introduced Kim to Tori and gave her Tori's whole history. Kim will be stopping by about once a month to check on Tori and take blood samples.

I also wanted to update all of you who ordered Pray4Tori candles online. For Ever Body , who generously produces the candles, needs to manufacture some more as we went through all of the previously made candles. It was about 4 pallets worth!! A large amount for sure. They are a little behind in creating the next set due to the holidays so please be patient and I assure you all that you will be receiving your candles. Thanks again for all of your support and please keep those orders and donations coming for Tori!!

We are now about 28 days away from the BIG journey. I've been encouraging education about stem cells and I found this great commentary from Timothy Welby. It is very short, please read it. He is right on that we need to aggressively research stem cells as there are so many potential USES and many UNKNOWNS that need to be discovered. Embryonic and Adult stem cells need to be equally funded and researched as there is promise in BOTH. Here is an article about gathering and using adult stem cells from hair follicles . Amazing isn't it!! We are just barely scratching the surface on stem cells and their benefits!! They offer HOPE for Tori and our family.

In closing tonight, here is another recent update on Maya who went for SCT in China last May. Please continue to hope and pray for Tori to have Maya's positive results or even better. We miss her so much.

Thank you,

-Tim