Update #1

Hey everyone. Meet this kid, his name is Brian and he is awesome.

As you all probably know by now, Brian was in a very bad motorcycle wreck yesterday. He landed on his back and the back of his head hit the ground really hard. He was taken immediately into emergency brain surgery. There, the surgeon was able to relieve swelling by removing a piece of Brian's left temporal lobe and that surgery went as well as it could have. A lot of times when swelling is removed in one side of the brain it can move to the other side but this didn't happen, which was awesome. He has some bruising all around his brain but nothing that looks incredibly severe.  He had a CAT scan at 4 am this morning and it showed swelling going down a little bit - this is very good news. We won't know anything about brain damage for about a week.

As far as Brian's back goes, the surgeon thinks it is broken completely in half. This means the spinal cord is also most likely severed in half. Due to the urgency of his brain trauma, they are waiting to look at his back more closely for a few days. Surgery is scheduled tentatively for Saturday. Because of the severity of his back injuries, Brian will probably be paralyzed.

He has a few minor injuries, a broken rib and a small collapsed lung. They will be weaning him off his ventilator later today.

On a slightly humorous side note: with brain trauma patients, the doctors and nurses like to see them moving their arms straight down or flexing them up (like doing a bicep curl). This is good because they put them in restraints and the body and brain should fight against the restraints. Well. Remember how Brian is really buff? He was not at all too happy to have his arms restrained down and he was giving those doctors A LOT of movement. We can all imagine what he was thinking :). He broke some tape and they had to redo some of his arm bandaging because he was flexing so much! When he wakes up we will be sure to let him know he didn't miss a day of workouts...neither did his nurse.

That is all for now folks! Thank you again for your love and prayers. Brian has an incredible team working with him at the hospital and we are also very grateful to them. Brian is always incredibly positive and hopeful so we are trying to mirror that excellent example. Here is a little video that lifted me up this morning and embodies Brian's abounding hope and love of life and the Gospel.

"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." -Romans 15:13