Evening

This is a good site: http://www.angiomaalliance.org/cainfo.html Mark's cavernoma is located in the mid-brain, which is part of the brain stem.

Hey! How about some better news? Mark still has some swelling but his MRI came back with no signs of a stroke. His fever is down but he's still wearing a cooling blanket. This is a great invention to those of us with hot flashes, but I'm sure Mark is hating every minute of it.

I called my old friend Patty Walsh who works at Jefferson. She pulled a few strings and two very important looking Patient Advocates arrived within the hour and escorted me to a conference room. All eyes were on us, walking down the hall to Mark's room like a senior mod squad. I think it brought the fear of god to the nurses station. They gave me a lot of good information and the day got better from there.

During our six o'clock visit, the nurse repeatedly told Mark to wake up. After a few times, she said "wake up, Chris is here" and he did. He stayed awake (as well as he could) for the entire half hour. I asked him if he understood what I was saying and he opened his eyes wide - that's our sign. Later, during the eight o'clock visit, his nurse asked the same old questions, wiggle your toes, give me two fingers, give me a thumbs up. Well, he wiggled his toes and fingers of his right hand, but more importantly, for the first time in days, he was able to do the same, although weaker, on his left side.

Mark's attending physician he said that he may have some visual imparement, but he's hoping for more progress in the coming days.

I know this has happend before, but I'm going to get just as damned excited as I did all the other times. Hope you all do too.

Damon and Derrek, people have been asking how this all started, and I'd like you guys to write the beginning of the story. They're the ones who actually saved Mark's life and got him to the emergency room.

Chris