I apologize for the delay of these updates, the limits of my body caught up to me.

As Day Eighteen ends, the X-Ray confirms her feeding tube is finally in the correct position. She is now under high alert watch because she is quickly becoming known over this hospital floor to be a lightning quick feeding tube remover with only her one left hand – even if it’s in a restricted cozy mitt. Due to her numerous and successful feeding tube removals last night, Jenny has not received any nutrition other than water over the past 24 hours. Because of this, Jenny has been asleep the whole day without waking up or even saying a single word.

The long awaited OT team (Occupational Therapy) arrived this morning and showed me some basic techniques to help alleviate strain for the muscles in her right arm and hands as they are still stuck in a bad muscle tone position where she’s constantly clutching and curling everything, including her fingers, towards her body. They are able to extend her right hand (forcefully) and she is showing signs of her muscles loosening which is good. OT said it’s still much too early to tell if its brain damage or muscle damage for this issue but that a potential reason is that because the right side of her body took the most damage in the accident, she may be subconsciously trying to protect her right side by clutching her entire right arm inwards. Half her stomach staples from the stomach surgery were removed today; I am happy to report there were no infections. The other half is supposed to be removed later by medical trainees and I am sure Jenny fully understands and is ok with that. Because of last night and her escapades, the redoing of four different insertions, with the following four transfers onto the transport bed after each insertion and the drain of four Xrays after each transport, all within a 24 hour period, her body must have been very exhausted as she was quite sweaty and dirty from the ordeal. The floor team knew this and Jenny received a very thorough wash overnight and looks much better today.

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As Day Nineteen ends, the Nurse reported that Jenny was able to say her name overnight. She was also able to say the day and month of her birthday, but not the year. When I heard of the news, I asked Jenny if she could tell me her name but this time around she said she could not. I asked again and she repeated that she could not. This is proof that her brain really does fluctuate between alertness but it is overall showing slow but positive progress.

Doctor [Redacted upon request] from the TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) team arrived this morning and told me that left side of her brain controls the right side of her body meaning that most of the brain damage she received is actually on the left side even though the surgery was on the right side. They discovered a blood clot in her lungs and she is being given “Apixaban” for it which will likely solve itself over time.

Doctor [Redacted upon request] and [Redacted upon request] from the Physiotherapy team came by in the afternoon. They were able to sit her up and test how she holds herself in a seated position. Seeing them do this broke my heart because it was the first time I got to see Jenny sitting upright since the accident and she… she looked like an exhausted rag doll with no control of her body. With [Redacted upon request] supporting her back and [Redacted upon request] supporting her neck, she just sat there with eyes closed. I could tell she was using a lot of effort to just simply sit but as I looked at her I felt such an incredible wave of sadness wash over me. Her hair was a mess, she could not open her eyes, her mouth was hanging open and with the feeding tube in her nose she just sat there at the edge of the bed barely existing. It was an extremely painful, eye opening experience to see her like this because it harshly reminded me that this is going to be a very long, difficult journey for her. As she was laid down after this activity she did not speak until near the end of the night when out of nowhere at 10:33pm she said something. I thought I misheard her so I asked if she could say it one more time just to confirm that I heard it correctly and after a brief delay she said it again for me.

“I can change... I can change.”