Welcome

Hello friends, welcome to this Blog site for our son Luke Duval. Please feel free to post your comments and messages here. We will post updates periodically to keep you informed of Luke's progress.

As you know, Luke suffered a brain hemorrhage from a burst AVM on April 14, 2007. The AVM is on his brain stem. The hemorrhage has stopped, but the damage done is very similar to a stroke. It has left Luke with the biggest challenge of his young life. A challenge he is now taking on with all his might and faith. The AVM itself is still there and will have to be dealt with in the coming months, but right now the doctors are concentrating on recovery to get him strong and functioning again.

Thank you all again for your tremendous support for Luke and our family, and especially for your prayers. Your support keeps us all going, and most importantly keeps Luke going knowing that so many people care about him and are pulling for him to make a great recovery. He is at Mercy General's Acute Rehab Facility at 39th and J. Right now he has about 2-3 hours per day of speech/swallowing therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy. He is making good progress speaking. Half of his mouth, tongue and facial muscles are numb and not working right now, but they are teaching him to compensate for that and to exercise those muscles and nerves and push their limits. Doing this allows him to get words out pretty well, and they are getting a little bit clearer each day. They have also started him chewing and swallowing ice chips. Swallowing is one of the most sophisticated things the body does. It requires a lot of coordination and timing. They are trying to get this back as soon as possible so that he can get off the feeding tube through his nose and begin eating/drinking on his own. They are very careful about this because if food or drink goes down his windpipe into his lungs instead of down his esophagus, that is obviously bad. He does have a pretty good swallow which is improving slowly. In a few days they will do a berium swallowing test to give a picture of how it's working. If that shows a safe swallow, then they will slowly increase his food and liquid swallowing over time as he can handle it. In typical teenager fashion, has asked for pizza. That was great for us to hear! Hang in there Luke you will get there.

During physical and occupational therapy they get him out of bed and into a wheelchair. Right now he is concentrating on beng able to sit in the chair, maintain balance, hold his head up and straight, and increase his stamina of doing all these. It is grueling for him and completely exhausts him. But each day he seems to get a hair better at it. They also wheel him down to the gym and do some arm and leg exercises, hand exercises, coordination things with objects to lift and move, etc. His left arm and leg continue to be numb and very weak, but he can lift them a little and squeeze his left hand and wiggle his left toes. The right side is much better with movement and feeling, but is also still very weak. His hearing is affected, left ear doesn't hear so well right now. His eyesight is also affected, he sees double and fuzzy. They think this is due to the pressure in his brain and on the nerves which control eye movement. This can take a while to get better, hopefully it won't be too long for him. He can see the TV up on the wall though and we've watched a couple of innings of ball games together. Last night we also watched his buddy Fernando Vina on ESPN's Baseball Tonight. A big THANK YOU to Fernando and Coach J.D. from PGHS for arranging for Mike Bibby of the Kings to visit Luke last week! We didn't tell him Mike was coming so he was pretty shocked when he walked into his room! Mike is a good man. Brought Luke a signed basketball and a signed high school jersey from his high school -- Shadow Mountain HS in Phoenix. Very cool. Luke dug it. Mike and Fernando had great words of encouragement to Luke, telling him to stay strong and battle. We have no doubt he will. He has always been a hard worker in school and in sports, he is very determined and that will help him a lot. He wants to get back to school and keep that 4.0 going.

Thanks to all of you who have come to visit Luke when he was at UCDMC and since he's been at Mercy now. He enjoys the visits, he likes seeing his friends, teammates, coaches, and the parents who have come. You are all welcome to come visit, but please call Susan or I before you do to see if he's doing well enough for you to come. One of us is always there. The last two days for instance he has had a fever which jumped to 103.5F along with chest pains, which was a scare. All his tests have checked out good though (blood, EKG, chest xray, CT scan, etc.) so they don't know what is causing this. They are controlling it okay though with a chilled blanket to reduce core body temp and with medicine. The medicine for this is a little sedating so it's going to reduce is ability to do the rehab work until they get him off it. Hopefully he won't have to be on these meds for too long. He is also in pain meds for his constant headache pain, and those make him a little sedated. The doctors require anyone who enters the room to wash their hands with the sterile handwashing liquid to the left of the doorway when you enter. Just rub it up and it evaporates on your hands.

Thanks also to our neighbors and friends Tom and Julia Franzoia who have done so much to help at the house with our other kids you just wouldn't believe. Julia also organized a schedule of dinners to be delivered to the house every Mon/Wed/Fri and has something like 70 dinners scheduled by all you good people. Thank you everyone who is paricipating in this, it helps A LOT. Thank you also to friends Kevin and Pam, Debbie, George and Lisa, Craig and Laurie, Tom and Lisa, Tim and Michelle, John Procida, and so many others for the nice cards, gifts and helpful things you have sent and done for us. Sorry I know I'm missing many others here. The long term support of good friends is invaluable and we appreciate having it from you all. Sorry we aren't crossing paths much to be able to tell you thanks in person, just know that we have seen and used everything you've sent and we appreciate it so much.

That is the update for now. Will update again in a week or so and will try to post some pics of Luke and of the Bibby/Fernando visit. Thanks and God bless.

Tom and Susan