A year ago at this very moment, Emily was asleep exhausted from a great day of skiing the trees and chutes on the back side of Parsenn's Bowl. The competition season was pretty much over and she and her teammates were just having fun. They were young, incredibly strong and they wanted to enjoy their last couple of days on the mountain. No one could possible know that just before 11:00 o'clock on Sunday, April 1, Emily's life would change forever.

We've had a year of incredible challenges and victories. Emily's gone from bedridden and completely unable to communicate, to being the darling of Craig Hospital where every therapist and most patients can't wait to see her smile and say hi. She's charming and articulate, although her voice is a little higher and much less strong that it was. Voice therapy is helping. Of course just to keep life interesting the medical spending account administrator is challenging whether the voice therapy is "medically necessary."

It's been a year of going to bed praying for the big miracle that will make everything the way it was, and getting the little miracle that proves she's getting better every day. The schedule is grueling for all of us. Emily works so hard and never, ever complains. School work takes longer and we've learned we can't wait too long between the reading, discussion, and assignment/test. Her Craig team is worried that it will be harder for her when she's back in the classroom with other students, but her homebound teacher thinks it will be easier because it won't be so focused and intense. We'll just have to wait and see. If anyone can make it work it's Emily.

Emily is walking 400-500 feet 1 person, standby assist with the Hemi Sidestepper. She uses it to get around the main floor of the house almost all the time. At Craig she's 1 person, mod assist with the forearm crutch, and she can usually manage 200-250 feet. She also managed 9 minutes at 0.7 mph on the treadmill at Craig on Friday, which is the furthest she's ever gone. The goals is still for her to walk without an assistive device; when we'll reach that goal is anyone's guess. Her physical therapy is incredibly hard for her; it's not unusual for her to be worn out and sweaty when she's done. And yet, everyday she rallies for her other therapies without complaint and doesn't let her physical tiredness affect her ability to participate in speech or OT.

We're getting some good movement with her right arm, especially when it's stretched out. The botox injections in the hand have stopped the work on grasping and holding things with the right hand for a couple of months, but it's allowing us to get some nice relaxed stretches with the hand and it stays relaxed much of the time.

Her right pupil is still larger and less reactive than the left, but she's got good convergence, and single vision laterally and down is coming along. Up will be the last to correct, but we're still optimistic.

It's still very hard for her to be independent in a lot of things, although she's trying very hard. I can't imagine the frustration of being a 16-year old girl and knowing you can't just jump out of bed when you want to and run to the bathroom. But we see slow, steady progress and we have to remember that if she'd hurt her neck and not her brain all these difficulties would be permanent.

She's still very much Emily with her wonderful sense of humor, huge beautiful smile, great attitude and amazing work ethic. Everyday we see the "old Em" more and more. We were at the zoo on Easter. She and I were standing at the lion enclosure waiting for Ken and Hannah to come back from the carousel, and it seemed so absolutely normal to be standing there with her; it was bittersweet.

Ken and I are both still trying to work full-time, while splitting our time with Em. It makes for a lot of racing around the city and frazzled nerves, but it's working. It also makes for some odd hours - working on your powerpoint presentation at 8:00 on Sunday night so you can be at Craig on Monday morning. Everyone's being flexible and it's working. There's just not much time for fluff (or errands).

As folks have probably already figured out, we won't be doing regular blog updates anymore. I promise to do updates for big achievements, but I don't want the blog to become a "chore," it's been too therapeutic to let that happen. Thanks for all your posts, thoughts, prayers and good wishes. It's been an incredibly difficult year and all the support has helped more than anyone can know.

Emily had another great week. After triumphant 400-500 feet of walking on Monday, she walked about 250 feet with the forearm crutch Wednesday and Friday. She's doing better and better with it, although it's still a lot more work than the hemi-cane. She's able to take more and more steps without holding on in the parallel bars and her balance on stairs has gotten amazing. I think it's actually easier for her to go up and down stairs than to just walk. We're using the wheelchair less and less when we're on the main floor at home.

Emily started her voice therapy this week. She'll be working with a second speech therapist that specializes in voice therapy for a half hour each week, and she'll have exercises we need to do at home. The goal is to stimulate the area of her brain that controls the pitch and sound of her voice rather than just treating the symptoms by doing more vocal chord injections.

Emily got her first home school report card. She's passing everything and getting A's and B's in the classes where she's done enough work to get an actual grade. She finished her American Lit research paper on modern monarchies, and heard back from Ms. V that she got 100% on her chemistry project. So school's going really well.

Em was able to go back to Philosophy Club on Thursday. It's CSAP week, so nobody was really in the mood to do Philosophy, but Em enjoyed visiting with everyone and actually worked on her computer in the Creative Writing Room for a little while. We got all the paperwork filled out, so Em will be a regular from now on.

This coming Thursday Em will have her final round of nerve block injections in her right hand. The hand seemed to be loosening up really well, but as we got the arm looser the hand got tighter. She's working with a new robotic device called a "hand mentor" to help get her hand working again. The OT's are going to train Ken and I to use it with her when we have a little extra time around Craig.

One of Emily's former ski teammates is making a documentary about her recovery. He's filming at the house this weekend and will be filming at Craig on Friday. His goal is to make an inspirational documentary that can help other people get through traumatic brain injury. We were proud of Emily for agreeing to do it and looking forward to seeing the final product.

We haven't gotten an "official" letter yet, but everything is in place for Emily to return to DSA in August. She's very, very excited and happy. She'll be in regular classes with some accommodations such as extra time for tests/assignments. She'll also be returning to Philosophy Club this Thursday, which she's also very happy and excited about. It's been a long, hard journey to get all of the school issues settled, and I'll never understand why it had to be so hard, but now they're settled and it's a huge relief. Her homebound classes are going well. We had the week off from her teacher last week and Em managed to get her first draft of her American Lit research paper completed and get through a chapter of American History (the Kennedy/Johnson years) and a chapter of chemistry (atomic structure and the periodic table relationships). Emily read and completed the section review questions for Chemistry in only about an hour yesterday.

Emily saw a new ear, nose & throat doctor a couple of weeks ago for her voice. Her voice continues to get stronger and more "normal" sounding all of the time. This doctor is supposedly the leading voice doctor in the country; just moved to Denver. He actually has a recording studio in his offices. He wants Em to start voice therapy with a specialized speech therapist that we'll see for the first time tomorrow. We'll do the voice therapy for a while and reevaluate whether or not another injection of collagen in just her left vocal chord is needed. Ultimately he may recommend surgery to shorten the left vocal chord a little bit, and he would be able to clean up her trach scar during the same surgery.

Emily is walking almost all the time when she's on the main floor of the house these days. She still needs one of us for standby assist, but her balance is getting much better. Every now and then she'll have moments when she just can't get her right leg to move, but that's happening less often. Em had another round of nerve block injections in her right shoulder last Thursday. The shoulder injections are always the worst. We saw a big improvement in her walking right away because now she's not pulling that right shoulder back when she takes a step with her right leg. The idea, as I understand it, is to block the nerves to the big muscles so that the smaller muscles can engage and give her more purposeful movement. The more movement/use she has of the arm, the better the signal from the arm to the brain, and vice versa, works, so that by the time the nerve block wears off she's got better control/use. Em has another appointment with the eye doctor on Wednesday. She's got consistent single vision now, but the right pupil is still larger than the left. We were at the Avalanche hockey game Saturday night and she had no problem following the puck in action - and there was only 1 puck! Emily really enjoys going to see the Avalanche, and we really appreciate the gentlemen who donates his tickets to the Craig Foundation.

All in all we had a busy, fun weekend. It was kind of nice to just hunker down at home during the bad weather yesterday.