Thursday

Noah just before his discharge from Western Medical and transfer to St. Jude's



St. Jude's Medical Center in Fullerton


St. Jude's is a very nice, modern facility -- and the therapy Noah is receiving is phenomenal. Every day he undergoes about 3 hours of therapy -- including occupational therapy, neuropsychology, medical social work, speech therapy, and physical therapy. His progress continues to astound everyone around him, albeit he has some serious work to do.

Noah is still unable to move his right toes, and has some numbness and pain in his right foot. As a result, we took an xray of his right leg, which came back healthy. The doctor believes this could mean one of two things -- nerve damage or a herniated disc -- but more likely the former. One of the doctors theorized that he did damage to his leg when he fell as a result of his rupture (16 days ago), but because we were so concerned about keeping Noah alive, we didn't catch the leg problem.

Noah got his stitches removed, and an updated CT Scan, which was compared with a scan taken a couple days ago back at Western Medical Center. Albeit this morning had us very scared because his swelling and pain seemed up, the doctor gave us very positive news tonight. Noah's swelling is down, and he appears to remain free from hydrocephalus -- let's pull for that trend to continue!

Noah still is missing a piece of his skull about the size of your hand that will have to be put back in (see below). We had heard that this might not happen for many months, but because Noah's swelling is down significantly, we might be able to put it back in sooner than anticipated -- of course Dr. Tabrizi will make that decision.


This is before Noah's stitches were removed.

This afternoon, the speech therapist had Noah write the names of his mother, father, and brother. To be honest, he had a very tough time with Mom and Dad, but when it got to me, he put the pen to the paper and wrote B-A-L-L-S, looked up at me and laughed.

I'm starting to suspect that Noah is enjoying himself. He refused to eat the hospital food tonight and had me go pick up a bunch of sushi, guilt-tripped my mother into about 2 hours of back-scratching, watched about 3 hours of television, and forced me and others to massage his un-toe-nail-clipped feet...while leveraging his inability to move his toes. Suspect.

goooooo NOAH!