Been a while since last update. Apologies for that. I'll do my best to catch up.

Dad took some notes during his day with Walter back on June 5. Some highlights from that day:

    -    Walter tires at the end of the day from his therapies and the muscle relaxant that the doctors currently have him on.

    -    The assistant to the three doctors was effusive with her praise of Walter's progress since he arrived at Shepherd. His movement is so much better, and he is much more alert. He played a form of racquetball in therapy and handed out "high fives" when         he made a good shot. The assistant ended by saying that in reality things move very slowly, but through the eyes of those who see the patients when they are first admitted, his progress is "remarkable—I'm impressed."

    -    At around 5 PM Walter was content to watch a college baseball game.

Things have continued to improve steadily since then. Walter is increasingly eating solid food. On a diet scale of 1 to 5, he is at "2". As he eats more food, the doctors cut back on his artificial nourishment. He's also saying more and more words and is trying to ask more and more questions. He's become aware enough to start wondering about longer term issues, like whether or not he'll be able to play golf again. Those discussions have been tough, trying to balance encouragement with honesty about future unknowns. He continues to work on moving between bed and chair. Jessica, Mom and Dad have been in family training this week to learn things like how to help him move back and forth. Pray, please, for strength of all sorts, including physical. Helping Walter move around is not easy.

He is scheduled to go home on June 17. Again, we're not certain of what that will look like, as far as schedules and living arrangements. We do know that Walter will continue therapy on an outpatient basis. Jessica is working on all the various logistics. I'll fill in details as we go.

A recent experience with Walter illustrates to some extent the communication frustrations we are all experiencing right now. Lyn and I spent about three hours with him this past Saturday evening, from about 6 to 9. We watched Blue Collar Comedy tour on the Comedy Channel for a while, and Walter visibly chuckled at a few lines. As we got closer to 8:30 and 9:00 (remember that visiting hours end at 9), he appeared to get sleepy, so we tried to help him get comfortable and go to sleep, but instead he became increasingly agitated. He motioned with his right hand toward the ceiling several times to communicate something but finally gave up. A few minutes later, Lyn guessed "You want the lights out?" to which he responded with an enthusiastic thumbs up. So far so good. He raised his hand up toward a clock on the wall opposite his bed and clenched his fist; we decided he was just stretching. He repeatedly pointed toward the door, so I closed it, assuming that he wanted it shut to keep out the light from the hall: all this making sense from someone who obviously wanted to sleep. But then he only got more agitated, pulling on his t-shirt, taking the cover off and on, etc. The more we tried to help him get comfortable the worse it got. Finally, Lyn called the attendant to ask for help. He shortly arrived and told us that, as was the routine, he would get Walter ready for bed as soon as we left. At this Walter whipped around to shake my hand to let me know it was time to go. He'd been trying for 30 or 45 minutes to tell us it was time for us to go so he could get ready to go to sleep. He had raised a fist to the clock to say "times up". He had repeatedly pointed to the door, not to get us to shut it, but to get us to leave out of it. Next time we'll know.