Ian had his eyes open when I got to the hospital this morning, which right away was exciting. It had been a few days since I’d seen him open his eyes. He was really angry and uncomfortable though because he had his casts on and they really bother him sometimes. When he has his casts on, he can’t reach his face, especially his eyes, so that seems to frustrate him. Since we were with him I took his casts off. That way, we could grab his hand if he was going for his eye. That’s when the fun stuff started happening.

My parents came for the day and brought Ian an early birthday gift. It was in a little gift bag so I put Ian’s hand on the bag and told him to take his gift out. So first he pulled all of the tissue paper out. Then I put his hand in the bag and told him to pull the gift out. And he did! He grabbed the DVD and pulled it out. Then he went back into the bag and found the box of golf balls that were at the very bottom and pulled those out too. Then I showed him his card and ripped it a little bit to give him a start. He kept pulling the paper that he could feel. He eventually opened the envelope and then actually grabbed the card and pulled it out. My mom and I were just laughing the whole time, almost in disbelief because it seemed like he knew exactly what he was doing. It was so exciting to see him do something so functional!

He was very aware of us today too. He would often reach for our hands. He reached for my arm a few times and pushed my sleeves up. Then he would feel his way up my arm to my shoulder and then pull my shoulder toward him like he wanted a hug. Then when he was done giving me a hug, he wasn’t shy to just push me away. One time he basically choked me by pushing me away, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t know he was choking me:)

I know it’s probably really confusing to hear about all the things that Ian does but then hear that he’s still in a coma. I definitely didn’t understand comas until Ian. It’s not like what we see in the movies, where someone in a coma just sleeps all the time. He definitely sleeps more than us but he is awake too. When he’s awake, he can hear us and seems to be aware of what’s going on around him. We’ve heard that being in a coma is like being in a tub of vaseline- anything you do takes a million times more effort than it should. I tend to think of it like he can hear us and know what’s going on, but just hasn’t made the connection yet of how to respond. It’s like he just has to discover and re-learn everything again. And he will always be on the coma scale, just like us. He’s at a 3, we’re at an 8. He goes up on the scale as he gains function.