The "after" picture

9:55am

Taylor hasn't touched the cane since he put it down weeks ago. He went "Cold Turkey", and has been working out at the gym to improve his walking. There are some days when you'd never have a clue that anything had ever happened. When he's tired, or when he hasn't gotten up to speed in the mornings there is still an inkling that he had an injury, but those who don't know him may never suspect anything.

We recently spent a week in west Tennessee at the "Taylors of Tabernacle" family reunion of the Taylor family - ancestors of Taylor's mother's family. WOW! That's a lot of "Taylor's" for one sentence! This year was the 182nd year the weeklong reunion, and way too hard to describe here. To find out more about it, you can read this Southern Living story or check out this video a Memphis television station did this year.

I figured this would be a good place to get a photo of Taylor "post surgery", since there is NO way he'd ever pose for a picture. In fact, as you can tell by the one I did get, he wasn't too tickled that I was taking a photo of him.

The surgery was a HUGE success. The right side of his face had pulled the paralyzed (left) side hard to the right. The ridge above his top lip had pulled to the right, so even in the resting position, the paralysis was very evident. That is all gone now, and he is VERY happy with how it's turned out. Taylor now looks just like he did before the accident. Although we had gotten use to how he looked with the paralysis, and were just thrilled that we had him to look at, it was really amazing to see him for the first time after he came out of surgery. He looked like the "old Taylor", only puffy.

Another side effect of Taylor's injury is a damaged internal Thermostat. His tolerance for heat is very, very low. It's a common condition with some brain injury patients. Being outside in west Tennessee in the summer, where temperatures were in the mid 90's and humidity at 85% for the first few days, was not the best place for him to be, but he tolerated it. We've spoken to his Neurologist and although there is some medication that can help, it apparently has some side effects that the Dr. would rather not put him through. So, unless he begins to sweat in air conditioning (as some patients do), he'll just have to learn new ways to keep cool.