Wednesday and Thursday, January 24th and 25th - Day 12 and 13 in Hangzhou, China

Hi everyone,

The sun finally appears the day after I complain about not seeing it since we have been here!! :-) We then took advantage of the sunshine and went into downtown Hangzhou and I will describe the experience later in this update. But now I will focus on Tori and her progress. Tori appears to be well adjusted to her schedule and our time change and generally sleeps through the entire night and has an afternoon nap after acupuncture and EMT.

James continues to push her greatly during the PT sessions and we have been giving Tori some Motrin the past few nights to help her with joint and muscle pain. Tori's muscles were extremely 'loose' during the Wednesday morning PT session. James was able to move her arms, wrists, hands and fingers in directions that didn't seem possible before. He kept asking me if I gave her any extra medication and I assured him I hadn't given her anything. So he took advantage of the situation and got some really great stretching in!! :-) Tori didn't stay loose for long though because when James started on her troublesome knees and ankles she became very tight, vocal and grimacing during the stretching once again... She continues to use the stander after each PT session and lasts for about 5-10 minutes at 52 degrees before she can't tolerate it anymore. It is her left foot that becomes painful and I know if she could stand on it correctly like her right foot she could do much better. She does acupuncture and EMT in the afternoon. The PT session has been great lately because Jenn is also helping James so Tori gets double the attention for 1.5 to 2 hours. The Chief Neurologist of the Xiaoshan Hospital visited Tori today and he asked me about her improvements since the stem cell treatments so I told him what we have been observing so far. I believe at times, Tori has more control of the muscles in her arms and hands and she has demonstrated this by doing new movements for us. I also believe Tori's muscles are 'looser' more often than they were previously. Before, Tori had tight and flexed arms and hands almost 100% of the time unless she was sleeping. Now I would say there are more times when she is fully awake and her arms and hands are quite 'loose'. Again, nothing scientific to really prove the observations and perceived improvements and we don't know if they are related to the stem cells treatment directly, the therapies or a combination of both. It's ALL so good for her!! :-)

Tori will be getting her third stem cell treatment this Friday afternoon with only two more to follow it. Each one has gone smoothly so far and we hope that trend continues. The medical staff had been impressed on how well Tori has been handling the stem cell treatments and the therapies as well. Of course we all know it is because Tori is the utmost example of strength and determination. Tori, Maria and I continue to watch numerous DVD movies throughout the day and most are repeated now because we have went through our inventory and the hospital collection as well... I'm trying to convince grace to take me DVD movie shopping with her so we can increase the hospital collection :-) Maybe tomorrow.

As mentioned earlier, Maria, Grace and I headed to downtown Hangzhou (West Lake) for a few hours on sunny Wednesday afternoon. Tori started her afternoon nap so we left her in Wendy and the nurses capable hands while we took a 25 minute taxi ride there and a 50 minute bus ride on our return to the hospital. It gave us much more of a perspective on the actual size of Hangzhou and it's surrounding districts of which Xiaoshan is one. Xiaoshan alone has about 2 million people and all of Hangzhou districts together has close to 7 million people so it's all one BIG CITY!! At home, there are only about 3 million people in the entire state of Utah. We were amazed with all of the high rise building construction that is taking place as there are new buildings going up just about everywhere!! Even amongst all of the existing high rise buildings. We even passed a massive Marriott complex that was still under construction. It was also easily noticed that everyone air dries their clothes as they were hanging from every window and balcony in sight. We saw alot of skinned ducks hanging by their necks as well and Grace explained that it is traditional to hang them outside for a year then eat them 'jerky' style for the Chinese new year. Sort of Thanksgiving like in the US but then again, not really :-) When we arrived at West Lake you could immediately tell it was much more international by the all of the people and businesses present. Papa John's Pizza, McDonald's, TCBY, Dairy Queen, Pizza Hut, KFC and most importantly Starbuck's!! :-) After eating some delicious and very authentic Thai food we grabbed some Cafe Lattes and headed to the shopping center. It was a giant maize of little sales shops with just about anything you could imagine merchandise wise. I mostly browsed and people watched while Maria and her negotiator Grace went purse shopping. Needless to say we took 6 new purses and 3 new wallets on the bus ride back to the hospital... ;-) We will certainly be going back and hopefully we can see some of the historic Chinese sites surrounding West Lake and do more shopping of course!! :-)

Maria and I took a much needed break from Chinese food tonight and ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut. It was the best tasting pizza we have ever had!! ;-) The internet connectivity at the hospital has also been very intermittent and unreliable the past two days so we hope it improves moving forward.

Thanks again for all of the love, prayers and support,

Tim, Maria, Tori, Whitney and Brendan