Friday Evening, June 22nd

A great day at the Roger C Peace Center. I ma never amazed and always keep my fingers crossed but today has been another wonderful healing day for Allie and for me. I have been with her for the last 24+ hours straight and it has been a great time watching her grow and blossom more and more everyday. She slept last night from about 10 until aroind 8 this morning and woke up refreshed, smiling and ready for the day. I left the room for 2 minutes this morning and came in to find her sitting up in bed and smiling. A great sight.

From there things got a little more interesting when Allie got fixated looking for her hairbrush and looked in every closet 3-4 times, in th ebathroom 100 times and was getting a little excited. I told her I would go to the nursing station to find her a brush if she would sit in the chair and wait for me to get back to which she agreed - big mistake!!! When I got back she had walked to the bathroom and locked herself in. When I asked her to open the door she proceeded to tell me no and that she was taking a shower. I calmly asked her to open the door again and she once again said she was fine and was going to take a shower. Now I was calmly panicked and hunted down a nurse who informed me she did not have a key and did not know where to get one. I was about to break the door down. While Allie cna walk, she is still a litttle loose and a fall would be bad. SHortly thereafter another nurse came by and jimmied the door. We were in phew, and there stood little allie, in her birthday suit with the water running on her. In all actuality I thought it was kind of amazing but scary none the less. they are now working on getting keys. It was Allie's time for occuptaional therapy anyhow so the therapist jumped in there with her and they got to work, shower, brush teeth, pickout and put on clothes. Way to go Allie.

While she was in the shower, I attended an educatinal class to fill me in on her trauma and what could/has been affected. Basic information but very well presented and very much appreciated.

Next Allie has recreational therapy and she made a beautiful beaded bracelet and read a few words for the therapist. They keep her hopping her so it was off to speech therapy, then physical therapy, then luch and back to speech therapy. All of the therapists have seen her grow daily and I have seen such a huge change in her. Full Recovery - Never a Doubt.

Allie has never been one to sit still - not even for a second so when she is not in a therapy session we are either walking or I am rolling her around. We wheeled everywhere today including over to the Ronald McDonald house to show her where we are staying. Then twenty or thiry laps aroung the hospital and off to the ICU and second floor to see all of her old and wonderful nurses who love her so much. They were all amazed to hear her talk and see her walk.

She still does not understand that she is in the hospital or what happened. She does ot know where we live or things like that but in time it will all return. One therapist said she has post traumatic amnesia.

On one of our walks today we went into the physical therapy gym and I asked Allie is she would like to climb the stairs and she did. She stood up, grabbed the bannister and walked up and down the strps. The PT walked by as we were doing this ans was completely amazed. As we were walking down one of the many long long corridors of the hospital, another PT stopped to talk and siad he couldn't blieve the transformation. He said 2 days ago you couldn;t get her to sit up in bed and not she is walking, talking, and being a little girl. He was right in his perspective. I had almost forgotten where we were a few days ago

A few of my favorite parts of the day were seeing Allies sense of humor coming back. Once again she is calling me pie (because she likes pie). She asked me what I was doing when she came back from a therapy and I told her I was just singing and dancing - she wanted to see spo when I did a jig and sang a song she craked up and just a few minutes ago some of her friends stopped by and you could see her brain activity jump to a new level - she knew who they were and she just started conversing with them. They are now pushing her around outside. Also when we were upstairs I put her in front of a computer and she typed in www.hotmail.com, entered her email address but could not remember her password, how many times has that happened to me.

Allie's gets fixated on things and will askthe same question over and over for 20-30 minutes, constantly or will get fixed on looking for something, right now it's her purse but it's so beautiful, you just pacify her 1000 times and move on - she is coming back.

One of our readers wrote about the essence of full recovery in an email to me today and I thought I would share it with you:

I look forward to Allie's Full Recovery and would love to meet her one day - what a testimony to tell the world! To come through what she has already and make a wonderful mark on the world, on people's lives to show them what a Full Recovery really is...the attitude you take on after an event that says regardless of what you have AFTER the fact, you are going to make the most of it and reach out to offer others HOPE! We are missing HOPE in our world today. Thank you for offering us all hope in difficult situations!

Full Recovery is about hope and inspiration. It is not about full physical, mental, emotional or spiritual recovery because that is not always possible but it is about coming to peace with your situation and recoverying in your heart, making peace and pushing forward. It is about people loving and helping others through their support and prayers.

I hear Allie coming so I'm off for now.

Love you all.

Allie's Dad