Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday - December 18th through 20th

Hello again,

I've been struggling a bit lately in keeping up on Tori's updates... Things are quite busy with Christmas around the corner, kids getting out of school, work obligations before the holiday break and of course planning a 32 day trip to China with Tori.

The good news is that there aren't really any negative Tori issues to report on. She is still doing pretty well in that she is sleeping nicely at night, agitated usually only once per day, active and aware during her therapies and most importantly keeping free of any illness!! She did well in her ST session with Meredyth today. They did the usual card and object selection exercises combined with more mouth exercises. Tori ate a large quantity of cotton candy during the session as well. She also has been having snacks with the family each night. Yogurt, chocolate pudding, chicken soup, pepsi and popsicles just to name a few items. She is still consuming very small amounts but she has been swallowing smoothly and coughing rarely. In reading the updates from many other stem cell recipients it appears that mouth control, swallowing and eating are some of the prime improvement areas. We shall see.

Tori has had alot of visitors stop by lately as holiday gifts and such are getting dropped off. I won't begin to list all of you but I wanted to thank you all none the less.

We are having a slight issue on the China trip logistics but I hope it is resolved by tomorrow. We took Tori into the post office to submit her passport paperwork and I had to obviously sign her form for her since she cannot. The postal agent then placed a note with the submission and assured me it would be fine. We chose to pay extra and expedite the passport in two weeks. Well... Two weeks later I get a passport letter stating the Tori must sign the form... ARGH!!! Why didn't they just send us that a day after they received the submission?!?! Why wait until the two weeks is over?!?! Sheesh... So I had Tori's doctor write a letter describing Tori's injury and why she can't sign and I then sent it back to them on Monday. I'm waiting and tracking for the certified mail to be sent back to us HOPEFULLY tomorrow with Tori's passport included. We still need to get our visas for this trip so time is of essence here and we can't afford any more delays... So PLEASE come through for us good ole' US Government...

Other than the passport obstacle, the other China planning issues are going fine. We've got a list and are checking it twice :-) We are planning to do some practice packing over the holiday break.

Here is an encouraging article on David Aldrich's China trip and progress since. More hope!! Here is another one on Public misinformation about stem cell issues . And finally an article on Linda Maher who proclaims this - "So far so good. Everything is going great for both of us - I just feel so much better in general since I came back from China – and that kind of result you just can’t put a price on."

Thank you for the continued prayers and support,

-Tim