Saturday, January 13th - Day 2 in Hangzhou,China

Hello again,

First off I want to wish Maria a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Someday I hope to take her again on a real, month long VACATION as a birthday gift!! When I told her it was her birthday today she didn't believe me so I had to remind her again that we are 15 hours AHEAD of Utah time. So I was eventually able to convince her she is one year older now :-)

Today Tori had her blood samples drawn and also had her rehabilitation therapy evaluation completed by James and other team members. She slept just as well as Maria and I did during Friday night and early Saturday morning. She did have some slight vomiting issues as we began feeding her the liquid Jevity through her G-Tube once again. She needed to adjust to the feedings once more so we slowed the standard rate of 110ml per hour to 90ml per hour and then built her up gradually afterward. The plan worked as she is now keeping everything down just fine.

We wheeled her to the rehabilitation room around 9:00am this morning where James and team did complete range of motion measurements on ALL of Tori's joints. They had her laying on a padded table and were twisting, turning and stretching her in every direction. Tori took it all in stride and only let out a couple of cries during extreme stretching. Now that the measurements have been taken James will really begin to go to work on her and I'm sure Tori won't be as happy then... It is all for the best though and Tori really hasn't had aggressive physical therapy for months because Maria and I tend to take it much easier on her when we do it. When the team asked if Tori was responsive I said of course and told her to "open her mouth and stick out your tongue". They were quite impressed when Tori obliged so I asked her for a "thumbs up" and a "close your eyes" to show them a little more. Tori wouldn't "use her voice" however and I told them I'm expecting her to do much better on that front after the stem cell treatments. I captured the evaluation on video tape and took many pictures as well. Hopefully I can make some of them available on the site but I'm finding the internet speed here to be quite limited at times... But we thankfully do have Skype and a VOIP phone running and are able to talk to and see video of everyone back at the house!! :-)

I also have pictures of our room and the surrounding 20th floor that I would like to share at some time as well. The staff has been great so far and our assistant Wendy and Dr. Shi have the best english. Many of the other nurses and physicians have limited or no english but everyone of them is eager to learn!! I'm doing most of the teaching and it is 99% one way as Chinese HAS TO BE the most difficult language to understand and learn...

Wendy took me shopping at the local supermarket today and I would describe it as a 3 story Walmart that was about 10 times busier and more crowded than what we are used to. I loaded up on diet pepsi, towels, laundry soap, cups, bowls and utensils and most importantly a coffee maker and coffee!! :-) Maria really needs it as she is having the most trouble with the jet lag and time change... In fact she has been sleeping from 3:00pm until 9:00pm today so she will be awake tonight I'm sure. Maria has yet to be in public but when she finally is I'll make sure to capture pictures and video because I believe it will be very interesting and entertaining for sure!! Why?? Because I was the only non-Chinese person in that store of thousands today and I received alot of looks, stares and general interest. Now imagine what a 5'10" blond and beautiful American woman will draw into the picture!! :-) I can hardly wait.

Sunday is a day off here at the hospital and we're expected to see Tori's final schedule for the month on Monday. That would include the stem cell treatment days, acupuncture days and other scheduled items. We've been going rapidly through all of the movie DVD's we brought but they have quite the DVD library built up here so we should be alright. There is ONE english speaking channel available and it is a stock market one... I'll be relying on the internet for all of our news and information.

Alright, that is enough for today and it feels good to be caught up on updates again!! :-)

Thank you all and good night from Hangzhou, China.

Tim, Maria and Tori