Day 23 - March 8, 2007 Thursday

Lynn's cell phone was ringing at 8:30 today on her way into the hospital building. Terry had the nurse call her. She told the nurse she was on her way up. When she got up there, Terry was talking. They had put the special valve on his trach and that made it possible for him to talk and swallow better. Lynn said it was so wonderful to hear his voice! Terry is able to have conversations and people can understand which causes a lot less frustration on every one's part. OT came in and checked on Terry's splint. She stressed how important it is for his fingers to be worked when they aren't in the splint. Debby Knox from Channel 8 came by today to meet with Terry and Lynn. They are interested in doing a follow-up story on the "Good Samaritan". Terry told her about his beaver - Benny. He told Debby he would give her one of his white Benny hats (baseball cap with a beaver on it). After Debby left, Terry asked to use the phone. He wanted to call his good friend Herb Snow. Herb had been up at the hospital the first couple of days but was unable to be there since he was sick. He didn't want to spread his germs to Terry. It was a good thing for both of them to talk. Lynn started to check with the staff about giving him a sleeping pill at night in hopes of him getting more rest. The nurse said she would check into it. Around 5:30 pm the Terry started having bad chest pains. He reacted as if it was a jabbing pain. He said it was like a hot poker. All of his signs were still good according to the monitors but he was in a lot of pain. He wanted to be put out of his misery. The pain lasted quite awhile so the hospital staff ordered a chest x-ray and EKG. Both were good - they said the had never seen an EKG quite so good in a 67 year old man. The pain seemed to subsided after he was moved around for the x-ray and EKG. Terry had a few visitors that evening.