It's hard to describe to those of you who haven't seen Emily over the last month and a half what a transformation we've gone through. I think Uncle Gary described it best: she was always there, she just needed to dig through the layers. It's so incredibly fun to have her back. She's so happy it's contagious. That smile of hers has brought tears to the eyes of so many people the last few days. Even when therapy is hard, which it often is, you just get that determined face that Hendo always commented on. Whenever therapy gets tough, I ask her "is this harder than working on your heli." So far she's always answered, "only a little."

When I got to her room this morning, she was all smiles as usual. As I do every mornig, I asked her what she'd like to listen to while we got ready for the day. She surprised me by answering "Michelle Branch." Well I didn't any Michelle Branch with me, but how cool - she'd obviously thought about music and decided she wanted to listen to Michelle Branch. By the way, she settled for The Fray.

She had a fabulous hour with her OT today. They spent about 1/2 of their time working on that tight right shoulder and the rest sitting up and multi-tasking. Emily sat on the edge of the mat table for 10 minutes straight today without any support! During the sorting, multi-tasking, balance exercises her only sin was trying to take short cuts - as in, want me to sort a deck of cards into blacks and reds, well I'm going to look through several and if there's 4 blacks in a row, I'm taking them all. In speech she worked on vocalizing and reading. In PT she did a strenth test, some stretching and then 1/2 mile on the exercise bike. On the bike she was using her right leg, as I'd hoped, but the tightness in her ankle was pulling her knee out of alignment. We may be facing minor surgery in the near future to loosen that right ankle. It won't be a big deal (her scar will be way smaller than mine) and it will likely make a world of difference in her ability to use her right leg.