WOW! An amazing day.

Let me start by saying that this started out as one of my lowest days in the entire journey. For the first time, I actually felt like it might be time to give up. But I remembered the red shirt that Gary often wore to his chemo sessions: Courage is being afraid, but going anyway. So I gathered up my drooping spirit, my sagging courage and kept repeating all that positive talk to myself and went to the hospital.

Well, in the ICU, we measure progress in baby steps - or in Gary's case, in the blink of an eye. There has been little or no response since Monday night. But today, there was plenty of life in behind those eyes. When the EEG technician asked Gary to close his eyes for 10 seconds, he did it - it was obviously hard work for him, but he did it. (He hasn't been able to close his eyes since Monday night) Then a little while later she asked him to do it again for 5 seconds. It took awhile for him to respond, but he did. The third time she asked him, the response was immediate and deliberate. Not only was he responding on command, he was actively letting us know that he was IN THERE, awake, alert and working hard to find his way out. I cried tears of joy. I danced around the room (I was only allowed to stay in if I could stay unobtrusive, but even the tech laughed and celebrated with me). From then on (that was around noon), Gary's eyes rarely left our faces. We talked, he was obviously listening. We didn't ask him to do much, because it was a very busy day for him and we felt we needed to let him rest in between all these visits and procedures. But he was clearly there. And clearly working on finding his way out of there.

So Hallelujah! The doctors cautioned us that this will be a VERY long road back, with still more roller coastering to go, but we continue to rejoice in these small, but significant-to-us steps forward.

His birthday is tomorrow. So if you think about it, raise a toast (orange juice, coffee or tea or whatever) and an hallelujah to an amazing miracle that your prayers and care are helping to bring about!