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I got a call from Jeff's wife today. She was excited to share some good news. Jeff has had a great week. His gall bladder infection is gone and they'll start to think about when the want to remove it soon.


He's back to making small daily progress in speech, occupational and physical therapy. In speech, he's now answering questions in more complete sentences. Instead of answering the question "what are you doing" with "sitting." He's now answering "I'm sitting in this chair." Or when asked what he likes to make at home, "I like to make beer." Another thing he's doing is, rather than just giving an answer that doesn't make sense, he's started to say, "I don't know, or "I don't remember." They are also able to keep him engaged in speech therapy for much longer time periods now. By the way, he's making all this progress without the heavy duty neural stimulant he was on, they've discontinued that one. He is still taking a much milder stimulant, one that he's been on all along.

Today in PT they had him sitting up and they were essentially trying to push him over, trying to test his balance and upper body control. He managed to stay upright. Something he previously wans't so good at. He's also back on the path toward eating real food again.

Something to note here. With each of the infection related setbacks he's had, his progress in therapy has taken a pretty hard hit. Each time it happens he has to work his way back to where he was. So you may be thinking to yourself, gee I thought he was already doing that. Well the answer is yes, he was already doing it. Now the good news is that he is doing it again.

It just goes to show you how much of a fighter Jeff really is.

We're headed in the right direction again! Keep up the positive thoughts and prayers. I still have no doubt that Jeff will be back.
 
Thanks for the update Frank. I always love to hear about Jeff's progress, even when it is him getting back to a level he has previously attained, because it is all steps to his recovery. Keep fighting the good fight Babs!
 
Great to hear that! I was wondering what was going on with Jeff last night. Tell'em to keep on keeping on.
 
A quick update from CapeBrewing:

Hi all,
Jeff had a really nice day today and I wanted to update folks. He's had some issues with his gall bladder recently and ended up having it removed on Tuesday. I know that doesn't sound like "good news" but he is recoverying from the surgery really well and actually had a physical therapy session today, less than 48 hours from the procedure. From what I saw today, he isn't showing any of the "set-back" that he's gone through with previous problems, which is a huge positive.

The big news is that Jeff has speech therapy once a day and during these sessions he gets, basically, a cognitive test to test his memory, logic, etc. He's been stuck at a certain level for a number of months but in this morning's test, his scores went up dramatically. His speech therapist was practically getting choked up telling Jeff's mom and me about it earlier today. This is huge news as it means that a bunch of additional switches in his brain basically clicked on.

I know they are clicking on because we webcasted the consecration brew this past Saturday and then I went in and saw him on Monday.

"hey... So you watched us make all of that beer huh?
"yeah"
"ya think we made enough with the 120 gallons"
"yeah"
"do you remember what kind of beer it was?"
"a group brew"
"yeah, but what kind of beer?"
"consecration"

These aren't answers he would have come out with even a few weeks ago so hopefully he is starting to break through and is going to start making some bigger leaps in progress.

Lastly..... THANK YOU again to the folks that sent pictures. The little "movie" that was put together was a hit so if anyone has any other pictures of club events or even just good pictures of club members, I'll put another slideshow together and get it to him. The more familiar faces he can lay eyes on, the better.... Especially now that he seems to be making strides.
 
Great News! I am glad he is recovered from surgery so quickly and that he had a breakthrough! Keep it up Jeff, and remember what the esteemed Dr. Leo Marvin stressed... baby steps. :) Push through the resistance Babs.
 
I heard about the gall blader thing through facebook. Had no idea about the great therapy session he had. It's heartening to hear. Tell'em to keep up the good work.
 
Jeff had a great day today. In OT they had him building shapes out of plastic pipes. They'd show him a picture and he would build the shape. He did pretty well. They had him spelling words with some letter tiles. And the highlight of the day, they put Jeff in a harness and had him on the walking machine. Supported by the harness he was doing great job walking, putting one foot in front of the other.

He doesn't seem to have any after effects from the gall bladder surgery and is much more alert now that they've discontinued the pain killers they started giving him after the surgery. But he is fighting yet another infection, although it doesn't seem to bee holding him back much.

Overall he's making good progress lately. His short term memory is improving as are his gross and fine motor skills. He's still got a long way to go, but at least for the moment, things are looking a little brighter.

Please keep Jeff in your thoughts and prayers. He still needs all our support.
 
Jeff's niece set up this Facebook page back when the insurance companies were giving Jeff a hard time. The family updates it with news about Jeff and you'll find comments from friends, family and folks just concerned about Jeff.

This [ame="http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1549025425752"]slideshow video[/ame] was recently posted. This video was shown during Jeff's big fundraiser back in December. It gives a little insight into the father, husband, family man and friend that Jeff is.
 
Jeff's been making some big improvements lately.

Here;s a quick video of Jeff. His wife handed him the pole and he knew exactly what to do.

[ame]http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1714027606293[/ame]


I got a text from his wife today. Jeff called her to tell her that the Bruins won last night , 2-0.

It's a great day. Have a great weekend all.

Frank
 
Fantastic news!...Thanks for sharing, Frank

:mug: Here's to continued improvement. :mug:
 
Frickin fantastic news indeed! watching him doing a little fishing is a great sight!

Keep up the great work Jeff! (or sandbag it a little, you know... to get in some more fishin' :D)
 
That's a great article. Thanks for sharing, and keep telling him and his family that there are more people pulling for him than they can possibly imagine.
 
F-Dub (frankw) and I just got a video from Jeff's SWMBO... it is Jeff taking six steps in the hallway of the hospital with the use of a walker and two nurses just keeping him steady.

That's a HUGE improvement!

I went to see him last Thursday and he could only muster two half-steps with a lot of help.

I'm not a religious man but I'm praying he keeps making big leaps in his rehab. The video was amazing to see.
 
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