The 3 of us went to visit Jeff last night.
There was a marketable difference between last week and this week ...
His "focus" was much better ... he had a clearer look in his eyes.
He vocalization was much improved. At times he has a hard time forming sentences and at other times he just blurts out a complete and perfectly understandable sentence. Most impressive was when he girlfriend was leaving she said "bye bye Jeff, I love you" ... he looked her straight in the eye and said (with slight slurring) ... "bye bye Jodi, I love you too". This type of vocalization was not apparent last week.
He expressed many more emotions ... smiling, smirking, eyebrows raising/lowering ... depending upon the conversation and as it progressed. He has a "peg" in his abdomen still and that is used to give him his medicine. The nurse came into the room and he knew exactly why she was there and his facial expressions and demeanor changed immediately telling/showing us ... he didn't like this one bit but knew that it was something that he needed to do and will put up without a fight. Once she was done, he demeanor changed right back.
He wasn't as agitated as he was last week, but he does keep trying to get out of bed and gets "pissed" because he can't. His father said that he has been showing "anger" in the last couple of days, but as the 3 of us discussed this on our ride home, we believed that his "anger" was a good thing ... it is a display of emotion and his anger seems to be directed at "something" ... which is he wants out of that place.
He is eating soft foods (and supplemented still with a feeding tube), so his motor ability to eat properly seems to be ok. Don't know when he will be reverted to regular food.
We stayed much longer this time than last time, and he was attentive the whole time we were there, unlike last week, when we kinda tired him out and he just rolled over and went to sleep.
I really have no "bad news" to relay, and the 3 of us left the hospital feeling much better than we did last week, but not kidding ourselves that Jeff still has a long way to go ... at least he is on his way forward in recovery and we have not seen anything that makes us feel that he is stalled or going backwards in his recovery.
The 3 of us are going to go in on a digital frame and load it up with pictures of him with Mars01 and the Pitts, different airplanes, and stuff that we think will stimulate past good memories.
Till next week ...
