May 17, 2000

Dear Family,

It is Wednesday evening and I wanted to share a little recent good news
about Skylar.

The day before yesterday he walked about ten steps (with a walker).
Yesterday he walked about 30 steps, divided between Occupational
Therapy and Physical Therapy sessions.

Today he walked all the way to the nurses' station and then back again!
This seems to me to be a notable advance in his abilities. Suzanne
tells me that during his walk he was not complaining about the pain,
which is also good news.

He is no longer being hydrated by I/V - he gets all his fluids from drinking
water now. While they are still feeding him through a stomach tube,
rather than a steady "drip" into his stomach they are feeding him in
larger amounts spaced hours apart. This is, of course, more like a
normal eating pattern.

After his walk today, he did vomit; but I suspect it was perhaps due to
a little over-exertion. Suzanne told me that when they told him he
could go back to bed he walked extra fast.

They are going to do some metabolic tests to see if he needs to be
fed more in order to gain more weight. There is also a CT scan that
is coming up sometime soon.

Thanks for continuing to pray for Skylar. Please ask the Lord to make
it possible for Skylar to go home soon, and even to come to visit Nana
and Papa at our house here in Escondido.

The Lord bless you all,

-Dann (for us all)


P.S.

By the way.... there are some recent pictures of Skylar just uploaded
to his website at http://skylar.cjb.net . The pictures show him in the
hospital recovering, except for one picture taken just before he went
in for the bone marrow transplant.