Friday and Saturday, January 26th and 27th - Day 14 and 15 in Hangzhou, China

Hello again,

Tori's stem cell treatment on Friday was through the IV only so there was not a spinal injection this one time. Tori's next stem cell treatment will take place on Monday afternoon and there will be a spinal injection and an IV placement of the stem cells. Her IV of stem cells and nerve growth factor began Friday around 2:00pm and Tori immediately fell asleep. In fact she slept until about midnight and then she was wide awake... She thankfully let Maria and I sleep though while she watched several movies calmly and alertly. She would only make vocal sounds to let us know her movie was finished and when she needed another one so it wasn't too bad. Saturday morning Tori was agitated and worked her temperature up to about 38 degrees Celsius so we had to give her some medication to calm her and lower her temperature once again. The nurses still have a slight tendency to declare a fever anytime Tori's temperature is high so we just tell them to come back into the room after an hour or so and she will be back to normal. This has worked every time!! :-) Tori had only a slight nap today and has been watching a bonanza of Harrison Ford movies tonight with Maria. It is just after 9:00pm here now and Tori's eyes are finally beginning to close. I believe we all have a solid night of rest tonight.

Our latest awareness game during Tori's PT sessions is to have her find people by their names. Jenn, Tina, Wendy and of course any of the nurses in the room who happen to be there. The big joke is that Tori can always find James because she just has to look where it is presently hurting :-) We're still working on getting some velocity and power behind her right handed punch as well. The velocity is the hard part as once Tori makes contact with her fist on James she can push quite hard already. I am always present for Tori's PT sessions and assist as well and I personally see with each day improved range of motion on basically all of her joints. Some are better than others and her left ankle is still showing the least improvement... It will definitely need tendon release surgery upon our return to Utah. The stander is a challenge for Tori as well and it is all related to pain in that left ankle and foot when it is bearing weight. Tori's muscle tone and tightness was back during the past two days and was very unlike last Wednesday when she had extreme 'looseness'. James was sweating once again while giving Tori PT during the past two days.

Tori can now use her right thumb and touch her ear, forehead, neck, chin and cheek along with her nose of course. The left hand is more challenging but she is getting it to move where she wants much better now as well. She typically raises it and puts her bent bicep and forearm over her face and can't remove it. But now if you calm her and slowly demonstrate how she can put her arm back down she can mimic the motion. In speaking with other parents that are here it seems that the appetites of their children who are receiving stem cell treatments are much better than they were previously. So I've been trying to feed Tori as much as I can during the day. Yogurt, bananas, crackers, candy, coffee, diet pepsi, water and basically anything else that is available. When I can keep her focused on eating she will eat until I quit giving her food. I'm still not convinced her appetite is and eating capability is better at this point but I'll keep pushing the food to her and see how she does.

Maria and many other of the caretakers here with their loved ones took a bus to historic Hangzhou today where they did some more shopping. They spent a half day there and had a good time. Maria got a bad translation on her beef stew and found out several bites later when it was actually identified to be 'beef tendons and turnips'... She didn't care for it at all and then couldn't watch the others around her who were all having fish head soup. So she had bottled water for lunch today :-) Tonight we made up for it though by getting our Chinese favorite 'Black pepper beef and vegetables' and white rice. The Chinese new year is also approaching so when I went shopping on Friday I loaded up on all of the traditional candy and snacks they had presented at the store. We are sampling them all and most of them are very good. We now have a box of treats in our room and anyone who enters must take one on the way out :-)

The internet access situation seems to be getting worse and worse unfortunately... I'm having to create all of my updates and emails offline and then I try to send them all when I happen to get internet access. Hopefully this will get better real soon!!

Alright, I believe that is all for tonight and we have about two weeks left before our return journey begins!!

Thank you,

Tim, Maria, Tori, Whitney and Brendan