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.