August 15th

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So far it has been an eventful week. Ashley's neurologist has asked physical therapy to step up the aggressiveness of her activities. They certainly did that today. Ashley either in active therapy, or in a therapy chair from 8:00am to 1:00 pm. She also had several visitors today. What was also interesting is that she is no longer receiving a stimulant during the day and yet stayed alert all day.

Yesterday Ashley was standing up in a special device that allowed the therapists to work with her upper body while she was reintroduced to the affects of gravity. The first time this was done with Ashley she had a drop in blood pressure which is not unusual. This time she tolerated it without any problems.

While we are hoping to keep Ashley at Select Specialty in Fort Wayne we are investigating other rehabilitation centers including Hook Rehab in Indy and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC). RIC actually has a Neuro-Rehab in Mishawaka. That would be convenient for her classmates at St. Marys to visit. The reason for checking out other programs is to identify the best rehabilitation program for each stage of Ashley's recovery.

As many of you know her brother Austin has had another bout with Rhabdomyolysis (form of heat exhaustion). He will be missing the first day of school on Friday to have further testing. We are confident that he will be okay. It is just going to take longer than recovering from a typical case of heat exhaustion.

Please focus your prayers for Ashley on her increasing her ability to respond to stimulus and follow commands during therapy. For Austin please pray that he can quickly return to football at full strength.

At that same time we will continue to offer up prayers of thanksgiving for all the support we have been blessed with.