First Email sent 11/29/'05

Dearest Family and Friends,

Thank you, thank you for all your prayers and beautiful thoughts and offers of support as we've hit this bump in the road. Ryan is resting reasonably peaceful tonight and all the reports show he has every expectation for an excellent recovery. Today was a long and eventful day. We went from Ryan sedated and having a ventilator to weaning him off the sedation which then allowed them to take out the ventilator. Due to the swelling in his head, he is not himself and was combative and hard to handle as he became more and more awake from the sedation. Boy is he strong! His nurse, dad and I were exhausted after only a short time with him. He had several other tubes and dev ices removed which made him much more comfortable and has allowed him to settle down and rest. He still has swelling on his brain and we are told he needs to remain as still as possible. The skull fracture will take a month or two to heal and we don't know how long he'll be in the hospital before he'll be allowed to come home. Our best guess is a week. As you can imagine, Eric and I are exhausted and Lauren and Cameron have been very supportive of their brother.

Please keep up the prayers, we can feel them and know they are working. We feel so blessed to have such a wonderful community of love and care supporting us. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Love,
Debi