Hallelujah!

Yet another magical report! Mikele related so much information so quickly (I think she was excited - duh!), that I'm sure I missed a lot. The gist of it, was that Dorothy passed some more big milestones, at least from Mikele's perspective.

This just in, from Mikele:
First of all, at 4 p.m., the nurse let me stay for Dorothy's regular evaluation, which she had never done before. She said "I'm going to let you watch her "dance". Meaning that the nurse expected that Dorothy would be randomly moving her arms and legs. Surprise! Dorothy opened her eyes, and when I talked to her, she worked really hard to find my voice. I said "Hi, wiggleworm" and she started to move her arms and legs! Then I said, "No, honey, we want you to rest" and she stopped! Then the nurse had to put an ice pack under her left arm because she's running a tiny fever, and she reached over with her right hand VERY purposefully, and tried to reach RIGHT where the ice pack was. I took that hand and told her no, we had to bring her fever down, but of course she didn't stop trying until ... the nurse said, it's okay she's had some tylenol we'll see how she does with that. THEN she laid her hand back down!!! Then I talked to her about where she was, and the nurse talked to her, and the nurse noticed she's trying to breathe over the respirator. I talked her into calming down, and letting the respirator help her heal, and then told her to go to sleep, which she did.

Then at 7 p.m....Tam had driven Bob to the hospital, so he could take over the night shift. Bob and Tam were in the room, and I had stepped out for a second - they were talking, and when I looked back, Dorothy's eyes were WIDE open. I ran to her side and grabbed her hand and said "Hi honey!" and she SQUEEZED my hand. Hard! Then her eyebrows went up to the sky, causing a very furrowed brow, like "What the heck???" I reassured her that she was in a safe place, and being taken care of. Dorothy started trying to breathe on her own, fighting with the ventilator again, and I encouraged her to relax, and let the ventilator do its work to help her heal, and Dorothy eventually stopped fighting the ventilator.

And that's not all! Bob started talking about her kitten Mika, and she SMILED!!! Around all those tubes and everything, she smiled. I ran out of the room to get the nurse. She was as excited as I was. The nurse said "Dorey, can you raise two fingers?" and Dorothy did nothing. I said "She doesn't like to be called Dorey" and the nurse said, "Oh, right. DOROT, CAN YOU RAISE TWO FINGERS?", and she raised her hand! Then she told her again, to raise two fingers, and she made a fist. So while she knows that she was supposed to do something with her hand, she wasn't quite wide awake enough to really understand. But MAN, not BAD for the first day!! It was clear she was hearing all of our voices, and she was trying to tell us how confusing it is inside her head. We just keep telling her not to worry, she's going to recover.

So everyone who is praying... keep it up! We have a long way to go with this. We know there's no guarantee that anything in particular will happen next, but these all seem like very clear signs that our Dorothy is inside there, and wanting to come out. A very magical day indeed. Bob probably has a very interesting night ahead of him!

Pic from 2006.