Ainsley Recovering Eyes Finally Open A Crack

Thanks for your e-mails and calls. I just wanted to let you know the most recent news. Ainsley seems to be in less pain and generally a bit happier. I think the swelling is pretty well gone. It’s hard to tell how much is just the new shape of her head. Her famous smile is back. Today I even saw her laugh. It’s so great to see her personality come back. She’s still a bit clingy more so than when she went into the hospital. My hope is that it will lessen some when she is better able to open her eyes. It’s hard to see her this way. But it has improved a bit each day. Now she can open them a crack, enough to see when she wants to. It seems to take a bit of effort so she still spends a lot of the day with her eyes closed. She’s also sleeping a lot which I’m sure will help her heal. On the nursing front, things turned around and the agency was able to find a day nurse to fill in some days. She won’t be here every day even though the insurance authorized it. That’s just how it goes when there is a nursing shortage. We have 2 more days scheduled. Her future availability is not confirmed but I’m thrilled to have any help and hope they’ll call to give us more days next week. Today was her first day and she’s great. Very nice and competent. Surprisingly she happened to need a trach herself for pneumonia last year. My hope is that I can now spend some time focused just on the other kids and that we might finally get out of the house and do something fun before the summer is over. So far it looks like the highlight of the summer for the kids was camping in the tent in the backyard with Steve while Ainsley and I were in the hospital. It feels like it’s going to be back to school any day. You know how the days fly.