September 23, 2017 10:30 pm

Today marks three months since Josh drove his friend's dirt bike off of a cliff in rural Oregon, landing on his head. We're told he received CPR twice from his friend while lying in the ravine waiting for help to arrive and one more time on the Life Flight helicopter ride to OHSU hospital in Portland. When we first saw him at the hospital, in room 21, he was going immediately into surgery to remove part of his skull in order to alleviate the deadly pressure inside his brain. We were told, carefully, to say goodbye as it was likely he wouldn't survive surgery.

We've put a photo of what Josh looked like three months ago when we first saw him at the very end of this post. Warning: It is very graphic. View at your own risk.

A few days later, while Josh lay in a coma in room 12, we sat in a conference with a handful of professionals from OHSU who told us, again, very carefully, that we might want to "pull the plug" on Josh as his prognosis was extremely poor. We were assured that if he did survive, because of his quality of life, he would prefer to have died. "Think about what Josh would want."

Well, here we are three months later and Josh is still with us, plugging away. It has been an extremely difficult three months. Hard to put into words, really. But when we compare where Josh is today to where he was three months ago, the progress is undeniable and substantial. Josh's death is no longer the constant concern it was a couple of months ago, for which we are very grateful. But at the same time, we are at times overwhelmed by the distance we still need to go before Josh gets to a point where we feel like his life will be meaningful and happy. Our daily mantra remains patience, perseverance, determination, and hope. We are so grateful for the support we receive both from caring and qualified medical personnel as well as from you, our wonderful friends and family. No way we could have made it this far without this support.

As for today, Josh had a good day. After breakfast he was keen on getting back in bed. Since it's Saturday with no classes, therapies, or planned activities, we let him do what he wanted and he slept until lunch.

At lunchtime, our good friend Deanna, who has been such a tremendous support for us here in Denver these past two months, visited with her two kids, ages seven and ten. After chatting in Josh's new room for a while, we went down to "T-Rec," the large room on the first floor where Craig keeps a lot of fun games, including Foosball, air hockey, pool, and ping pong. Josh usually enjoys hanging out here and thrashing his parents at the various games. (Curious indeed how Josh so easily beats us in game after game despite the fact that he has a traumatic brain injury! - wink, wink)

We played all of the various games, rotating in and out. Josh played ping pong for the first time and did remarkably well for having only one eye, limited mobility, and a lack of balance. More importantly, he seemed to enjoy it.

After three hours of games, we were all tired (except for Deanna's youngest, who wanted to keep playing!). We flung Josh into his bed for a nap, bid adios to Deanna and her family, and then went shopping! We don't have a lot of time to do things we like to do, between Josh and work, so it was nice to take a couple of hours and spend money. (We actually didn't end up buying much of anything, but we gave it a real effort.) We grabbed some dinner at the mall too.

We got back to the hospital as Josh was finishing his dinner. We got him into the shower after dinner (he showers every other night) and into bed after his shower. By the time he got his medication, it was about 8:30 and he was ready to go to sleep. He tires very easily and today was a big day for him. We'll see what tomorrow brings........

Scroll down for the photo of Josh from June 23.  Graphic.