Shocking News

I am going to quickly try to bring everyone up to speed. For those that don't know, here is the announcement I made days ago to my coworkers and friends:

Hi everyone! I first want to thank you all for your kind emails, visits and text messages. I know there has been a lot of speculation as to what really happened so I will give a quick synopsis.

Kevin was in a NATO convoy driving through the city of Jalalabad in Afghanistan on May 31. A suicide bomber filled a vehicle with explosives and drove it into my son's Humvee. I do know that there were 4 people in the Humvee. Both my son and his battle buddy survived the blast - the other two did not. Kev was pulled from the wreckage and rushed to a hospital in J-bad. He has since been flown back to Germany and is now on this way to San Antonio, TX to a military burn unit. Here is a rundown of his medical condition:

He initially had internal bleeding, but they cut his stomach open while he was still in Afghanistan and did manage to stop it. The doctors in Germany 're-opened' the cut this morning and verified that the internal bleeding has stopped.

He has burns on 25% of his body - mainly his face, neck and hands. He will need rehab at least on his hands. He is also on a ventilator at this point, but they have begun weaning him off of that. His left ankle is fractured, but the most severe injury is the head wound. He has a lot of staples in his head and the doctor's are unsure of neurological deficits at this point. I have been told that he may be blind, he may be deaf (particularly in his left ear), and he may have problems with speech. We are unsure of this because it's just too soon to tell, but this is what I was told.

On a good front - he is conscious but sedated. His kidneys and heart are fine and he seems to be responding to the doctor's voice. He was able to grasp the doctor's hand and when the doctor told him that we loved him, I was told he shifted in his bed. We don't know if that was because he was responding or if he just needed to squirm, but I am choosing to believe he understood what was being said.