It is with a heavy heart that I write this posting. Last night, at 11:37 pm, Lynn passed away at home in my arms. I had not updated the blog for quite some time because after we experienced complications, we decided to bring Lynn home for his final days. When it was made evident and confirmed by the neurologists that Lynn would never come out of his coma, we knew what Lynn would want. He is now in the arms of a loving Heavenly Father and with his brother Keith and other loved ones. While it is extremely difficult to let him go, I know that he has passed his mortal test and is where he deserves to be. I want to thank all of you who supported us through this very long and difficult ordeal. Your prayers were always being answered. We prayed that Lynn would be alright. He was alright through the entire process, never in pain. He is now more than alright where he is now. I will ask you to continue to pray for me and the rest of his family, especially his children, that we might find peace. The funeral will be Friday afternoon at 2:00pm at the Roy South Stake Center in Roy, Utah which is on 5725 S. 3750 W. The viewing will be Thursday night at the Lindquist Funeral Home in Roy which is on 5600 S. and right before 3500 W. from 6-8pm.

Lynn has been tolerating his capped trach extremely well. We have not had to uncap it since it was capped. So hopefully in a few more days we will be able to talk about taking the trach out. Now we have a new development. Lynn has started "storming". For those of you who don't know what "storming" is, it is a autonomic sympathetic nervous system response which is commonly known as the "fight or flight" response. The hypothalmus of Lynn's brain is sending signals that set off this response. It causes increased heartrate, increased blood pressure, increased respiratory rate and often agitation. While this is not considered "normal" in most people, the neurologist said that they see it in almost all brain injuries. Now if you ask the neurologist, she will tell you that it doesn't really mean anything good or bad. If you ask the nurses at South Davis, they say that it is a good thing and they see it as one of the stages of waking up. Some people will progress through the "storming" stage and go onto the next stage. Some people never progress past the "storming" stage and can even regress back to a previous stage. So we still don't really know what it means for Lynn, other than it's a change which I consider a good thing. Unfortunately, it is difficult to watch Lynn in this state because he becomes very tense, breathes fast and appears agitated. We have started him on Propanolol which helps decrease the symptoms. His blood pressure and heartrate were getting pretty high and the Propanolol helps. After almost two days of "storming", he was very tired once we got the symptoms under control so he has been sleeping most of the day. You can still see that he is "storming", but he doesn't seem as distressed. I was worried that the stress of "storming" would affect his OTC deficiency and cause problems so I e-mailed Nicola Longo who is the Metabolic Geneticist who has been overseeing Lynn's treatment for OTC deficiency and asked him about it. He said that it shouldn't affect the OTC but that Propanolol was alright to give. Hopefully tonight Lynn will get some rest since he didn't get much last night. On Tuesday, Lynn has an appointment with his Neurologists at the University. It will be interesting to see what they have to say. I will try to keep you more updated. It looks like Lynn and I will be spending both of our birthdays in the hospital!

Today we capped Lynn's trach! He tolerated it just great as I knew he would. This is the next step towards removing it altogether. Another step in the progression. Other than that, he had a pretty quiet day, but that was after yesterday when he had his eyes open for a good amount of the day. He has still not talked again, but yesterday it looked as though he was trying to. I sure wish I knew what was going on inside that head of his! Another test of patience. But I will continue to rejoice in the good things that are happening.

As I suspected, the last 2 days have been pretty quiet. Lynn does keep his eyes open for longer periods of time but he has not spoken since that time on Thursday. However, the nurse did report to me that he repeated the word "Hi" Thursday night for her. Some of the times he has his eyes open, he seems as though he is still asleep with his eyes open, and then once in a while, he will appear more awake and he will focus on you and look around. It's always a guessing game. But we all have to continue to be patient. Happy Mother's Day to everyone!

What an exciting day we had! Today we put the voice valve on Lynn's trach. This is the next step towards eventually plugging and then getting rid of the trach. It allows the patient to inhale through the trach, but exhale through the mouth and nose. When we put it on, Lynn did great. When he went to cough, he was now making sounds. The new sounds were making him more alert. One of the times he coughed, he opened his eyes really wide and looked at me. I said "hi" and he said "hi"! I turned to the CNA that was there and said, "did that sound like hi to you? The CNA said, "Oh yeah, definitely". I tried to get him to do it again, and he would make sounds but you couldn't tell what he was saying like the first time. This is a huge step. Earlier in the day, he stuck his tongue out on command. It takes him a while to process what you are asking him to do, but he did it. He has a hard time repeating things because it takes so much of his energy to do the first thing. He was pretty alert for a large part of the day. Tomorrow could be good again, or we could have a quiet day or two. It seems to be the pattern. Let's hope for a good one!

Sorry I haven't posted lately. There really isn't much to tell. Lynn is about the same. We have some very encouraging days like the one I described in the last post, and then we have some not so encouraging days. It is difficult to judge progress when I am there every day. People who only see him once a week or so say they can tell differences. Today was a sleepy day. It seems as though we have a couple of more alert days and then they are followed by a couple of sleepy days. Tomorrow we are planning to try a voice valve on his trach. This allows the person to breathe in through the trach, but not out. They have to exhale through their mouth and nose. This is the next step before we plug the trach and then the next step would be to remove the trach. Wish us luck! On another note, many of you know that his daughter Heather is getting married in June. With Lynn in a coma and unable to communicate with us, this poses a problem. I am not familiar with all of the people Lynn would want to invite to the reception, never mind addresses. There are alot of people that I only know on a first name basis or that I don't know at all that we should invite, so I am asking for your help. Please send us your name and address and if you don't know me well, your association with Lynn. I realize this is very unusual, but I'm not sure how else to do this. I've actually thought about posting something in the paper so people won't feel left out. You can send your info and anyone else you think I should know about to Heather at heatherkraaima@yahoo.com. Thanks in advance for your help, and thanks again for all of your support.