Tori and Maria posing and catching some sunshine.

Tim and Tori in the bicycle and motorcycle lane heading to the park.

Hello all on Superbowl Sunday!!! :-)

Fortunately for us, as satellite dishes are illegal in China, I have found some CBS internet video streaming sites so we'll be able to watch the game on my computer at 7:30am Hangzhou, China time. We'll have to set the alarm to wake up of course ;-) A Superbowl breakfast party?!?! Ok, we can try it once :-) We'll also have the game Tivo'ed at home in case we want to watch it again I guess.

Tori continues to do well as she has been calm and basically not agitated during the days and entirely sleeping through the nights. Saturday she had her normal rounds of therapy with James. PT in the morning followed by acupuncture and EMT in the afternoon. It didn't seem like she was as bothered as much during the PT as James went through all of his stretching routines. She didn't cry, scream or grimace nearly as much as usual but that just might have been due to her good mood I guess. If she can maintain that attitude for several PT sessions then I'll be impressed. When James is working with her fingers he can now place them in a totally extended and straight position without having Tori go ballistic. She even tends to keep them in that position for a little while after stretching but her brain eventually causes them to slip back into the curved wrist and fist position... Tori's brain is still sending signals to her muscles to 'clench' pretty much at all times. The tightness may vary but she is still continuously 'clenching'. Tori is now doing slightly controlled lifts of her legs when she is focused. We keep working on this by having her try to kick our hands when placed over her feet. Electrical stimulation on the acupuncture needles placed in Tori's limbs has been going on for a few days as well. This is designed to help her movement as well.

We are also trying to keep Tori eating each day. Usually a yogurt and pieces of a banana. One of our challenges has been getting her to close her mouth and lips around a spoon to take the contents off when it is pulled out. This has always been very hit and miss but she was able to do this very well in four consecutive bites last week!! I would still like to see greater quantities of food going through her mouth though and we'll keep trying of course!!

Hello again,

I wanted to provide a very quick update today to let everyone know that has Tori uneventfully and successfully received her fourth SCT!! She had the stem cells delivered through a spinal injection and through an IV. She is still resting on her back watching a movie as I am creating this update and at this point she seems to be completely over her cold. She slept the entire night and she was in very good spirits all day today. She also had a great PT session this morning with James as well. Since she had the SCT today, she had no afternoon therapies as in acupuncture and EMT. I'll post a more comprehensive update this weekend with exciting information I have learned from other patients who are here.

Thank you for the support!! :-)

-Tim, Maria, Tori, Whitney and Brendan

Greetings,

The good news for Tori continues as she appears almost totally recovered from her illness!!! :-) We still haven't heard what the sputum cultures have grown but it doesn't really matter at this point. What really matters is that Tori is sleeping through the night fine once more, coughing very little and clearing her throat nicely herself, having little agitation and having a normal and constant 36.8 degrees Celsius temperature. Everything is on track for her forth SCT via spinal injection and IV tomorrow!! :-)

Tori's run of the Azithromycin and Cefotaxime antibiotics will end tomorrow morning as well. We have had to alter her therapies for the past several days as she is getting her antibiotics intravenously each morning. So at 10:30am, James has been coming into Tori's room and providing acupuncture and EMT until noon. We then take Tori to the rehabilitation room for her PT session at 3:30pm. We believe Tori likes this schedule better as well because we don't have to rush to get her ready in the morning and maybe because James is more tired in the afternoon and can't work her as hard. I'm just kidding on that one as James always has plenty of energy and Tori knows or even dreads it!!... ;-) We have also stopped having Tori do the stander as it was obviously too painful for her and I doubt she was receiving an appropriate benefit from it... Since her left foot won't move into a standard position she was standing on her toes lightly and placing the majority of her weight on her right foot. Our plan is to get tendon release surgery on that left foot once we get home before placing her in a stander again. So James is now using that time to provide more massage treatment for Tori and she likes that much better anyway :-) We had Tori listening to an ipod during today's PT session and it seemed to take her mind off the therapy itself a little more. James also made her take notice of her right knee as it is now bending greater than a 45 degree angle!! Her left knee is improving as well but seeing her right knee bending like that again is really impressive. The post SCT and rehabilitation measurements they will take again before we leave should be very interesting as well especially when compared to the previous measurements taken when we arrived.

"Nothing is predestined; the obstacals of the past become the gateways to new beginings".
Nothing in life is easy everyone says. But the things we want the most are the ones that challenge us and make us stronger each day. I never really understood what that meant until our Tori that everyone loves. She is my inspiration, my hero, and my best example. I've known her for years now and every memory brings a smile to my face. She always was the leader, the pusher and the fighter, as she is now. Wanting to push when it seans like nothing will budge is what makes growth in a person and in everyone surrounding them. Since Tori's accident it is plain to see the growth in everyone around us. We see shirts, braclets, signs and hear the words. Thank you Tori for helping to push me every day for the things i want most, someday, i hope to be half the girl you are! I love you! You're beautiful and you know it too ;)! -Haili Walker

Here is the entrance to the hospital.

Xiaoshan sunset from Tori's room on the 20th floor of the hospital.

Here are Maria and Tori relaxing a little.

Good evening from Hangzhou,

Tori didn't get the good rest we had hoped for Monday evening and early Tuesday morning... She was pretty much up all night and I was as well trying to keep the phlegm in her lungs suctioned out. She wasn't really coughing at all to clear it herself as she was too weak to do so. We kept her on numerous medications including motrin, zanaflex, xanax and even ambien to try and keep her calm and to possibly help her sleep. It didn't help too much though as she kept building up phlegm in her lungs and was 'rattling' all night... We watched her blood oxygen level and temperature closely and she maintained 90% and above on her oxygen and her temperature was usu sally floating around 38 degrees Celsius or 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

By 8:00am Tuesday morning she was so exhausted she finally fell asleep. I suctioned alot of phlegm out of her during the night and at least she was sounding pretty clear before sleeping. The medical staff came by on their rounds at 8:30am and they took a sputum sample and ordered for Tori to start on two antibiotics which are used generally in China. They are Azithromycin and Cefotaxime and are broad spectrum antibiotics. So the combination of the two should cover a wide cross section of bacteria that is common in China and in this hospital and we will run three days worth. In the USA we would typically use Keflex, Levaquin and Zosyn on Tori for the same reasons. The last time Tori was in a condition similar to this was last July at PCMC (Primary Children's Medical Center) and we never did identify the bacteria through sputum samples that caused the condition. And that has happened previously with Tori as well so I prefaced the medical staff here of those occurrences. Our thoughts now are that Tori basically has a common cold which normally will last three to five days. We need it to be closer to three or four days because Tori's rescheduled SCT treatment is now slated for Friday afternoon...