Miracles do happen!

As you know, Tom has been in a somewhat vegetative state - limp, unable to talk much, very confused, sleeping often, etc. Well, last night it was as if he awoke from being comatose. He looked at me and asked, "Where......am........I?". I said, "You're in Intensive Care". He was confused and asked why. I explained what had happened, symptoms, etc. He shook his head and thought about it for a while. Slowly, over the next couple of hours, he began talking in complete sentences and understanding what I was saying - we were actually conversing. His memory began to improve as well. I quizzed him and he was able to tell me the make and model of his vehicle, my maiden name, the city where he was born, his age. I was so excited! I began calling people at midnight and telling them in a frenzy what was happening. He was surfing tv channels before we went to sleep.

Friends, I kept some scary news from you this week but I can share it with you now because I firmly believe that Tom's situation was due to a temporary but severe negative drug reaction or even withdrawal. The doctor told me three days ago that Tom might not survive all this (of course, I knew he was wrong), because he didn't see any signs of improvement. So, as you can imagine, I've been in shock and I've had to endure the painful duty of sharing this info with Katie. She and I have been strong and we can now celebrate Tom incredible endurance. We are so incredibily happy and proud of him today!

All MRIs, CT scans, and EEGs to date have shown no sign of stroke, clot, cancer, etc. Whatever happened to Tom was probably caused by a drug interaction. I backtracked a few days ago and realized that Tom's symptoms of tremors and physical instability started when he began taking a drug called Sirolimus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirolimus. When that medicine was suddenly stopped is when he ended up in ICU. I've been telling the doctors since he was admitted to ICU that I believed Sirolimus had something to do with his condition, but they didn't think so. Today one of the doctors said that was a possibility.

So, Tom is going to be under observation in the Bone Marrow Unit for several days and resume physical therapy today. Tom certainly knows how to rebound, doesn't he?