Walking around

As requested here are some pictures of Kent walking. He is strong and his muscles are working. It's amazing that he can walk with his legs being so freaking skinny. (Think of his normal size and subtract 10 lbs. STICK legs!) He still has a hard time with his balance but we're sure this will take care of itself in no time. The doctor told us today that he has some nerve damage on the left side of his face. Consequently that side is currently paralyzed. They will have a specialist come in and take a look at to determine the extent of the damage.
Today they took him for a walk outside around the hospital. He is very determined and doesn't want to have to be helped. It has to be really frustrating for someone as independent as Kent to need extra help to get things done.
It sounds as if they are going to work on getting him a trach that he can talk with early next week. It will be nice for him to be able to use verbal communications. Some things are harder than others to get across with hand gestures.
We are starting to see more and more of Kent's personality. Tonight Jordan and Glen came up and saw him. My mom said he perked up when they got there. We think that it is good for him to start having visitors. I'm sure he's getting sick of seeing just our faces. After discussing it with his nurse my parents decided that the best thing to do is to have you call my mom and coordinate a time to come up. This way we can control the number of people (4 or so at a time) that are at the hospital. The other reason we want to do it this way is because Kent has a rehab schedule throughout the day and we don't want visits to interfere with the treatment. Mom (LeAnn) will let you know if it's a good time or not. The other thing that everyone needs to be aware of is that they medical staff may need to ask you to leave and you need to not take it personally! Again, we are still focusing on what is best for Kent. If you don't have our mom's number please email her at pauldannelly@comcast.net and she will get back to you as soon as she can.
It has been such a crazy two weeks and Kent has come so far. (This is where I become the sappy big sister) I think that we have all been on auto pilot trying to get him well and now that everyone is back in Utah we are starting to realize that he still has a hard road ahead of him and it hard to not get a little emotional. Sometimes it is difficult to see his skinny little body laying in his bed. He can't talk and his facial expressions are limited by his jaw and facial paralysis. It's hard to tell if his is sad, happy, depressed etc. This makes it really difficult because we want to make sure he is okay physically and emotionally. Kent is so good at making the people around him happy that it feels like it is our turn to make him happy.

There are so many of you who have a place in your heart for Kent and our family is so grateful for all of your prayers. We love Kent so much and he is such a unique part of our family (unless you are considering that he is a carbon copy of our dad in a lot of ways). Even when you trip over his shoes or he makes some smart comment, he is always loving and cheerful. MANY years ago our mom had separate necklace pendents with pictures of each of us kids. Even though there were 4 of us, she always wore the same one . . . Kent. We now tease her that it's because Kent was her favorite. While we know that this isn't true, each of his siblings and in-laws will tell that Kent is special. I'm not quite sure how we would have functioned if we had lost him and I'm really glad we didn't have to find out.