From his dad:

Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2005 6:23 PM

Jason has improved substantially today. He recognizes people and since morning when he was drifting in and out of reality. He can hold a conversation. His pain medications are very high and he still sees figures from movies like star wars but now he realizes that they are not real and I think he is amused by them.

Jason doctors (I have seen dozens of them literally today), say he is making good improvement. Jason insists, by the way, that he is involved in all conversations with medical staff. Tomorrow they are going to clean wounds and hopefully close the right arm. Although there is tremendous variation among patience he may be out patient in two to three weeks. However, he will still live on campus and will be treated everyday. These treatments will go for months.

Jason is thankful to be out of Iraq and is already making plans about what he wants to do when he recovers. I sure that his feels about the future will go up and down but with love and support of family and friends he will recover substantially physically and emotionally.

There was lots of good news today but I am sure there is going to be lots of pain and emotional stress as he recovers.

I am amaze that will all the suffering Jason is going through that he takes the time learn the name of each caregiver, establish a personal link with them and thanks them for helping him. For me this is true hero behavior.

Susan Jason got a cd player from the Red Cross today, it is a cheapy but things get stole here. I have bought him a i-pod with speakers and his friend said he could put cd on the ipod also. He does not have a tape player. I would not buy books or cd on tape. Yet if any of you have some that you like send it to him if you mind not getting it back. For other books let me see what he is interested in.

There have been some phone calls too.  Xenia posted about them.