According to Wes’s wife, Alyssa, on her blog:
Wes has been improving each day!! It’s been great to see him more alert and aware of his surroundings. He is still stubborn and has even began to joke even 🙂 He still remembers the accident and even the plane ride to the hospital. The doctor expects the only lasting effect he will have is a loss of 50% of his eye sight in the right of each eye. The vision he does have now is blurry, but that should improve as the swelling continues to decrease.
After a week in Ethiopia, our doctor felt that Wes was stable enough to be transferred by air ambulance to another country for addition treatment. We received an incredible amount of help to make all the arrangements necessary to have Wes flown to Dubai. Sunday at 4:30 pm the air ambulance arrived at the Addis airport. We had Wes in the ambulance ready to go when we received a phone call from the airport…they did not have enough fuel to give the ambulance to return back to Dubai. I just had to laugh because we had been scrambling with details to guarantee there would be no hang ups in Wes’ departure…but none of us had even considered that getting fuel from the airport would be a problem. Somehow the French Embassy heard about our situation and donated the additional fuel needed for the flight from their private stock. THANKS FRANCE!!
Fully Equipped Ambulance Plane
This plane is a fully equipped ambulance accompanied by doctor and paramedic. Wes sustained the flight well and his only problem was nausea. My sister, Kate, flew with him in the plane and I flew commercially on a flight that same night. He was transferred to the Nero and Spine Hospital. He has great doctors and nurses! It has been such a relief to know he is being taken care of even if we are not there to supervise 🙂 His eye sight is still very limited and blurry. The Dr. believes he has permanently lost vision in the right side of each eye. Wes is hoping the blurriness will go away in his remaining eye sight. Once the swelling in his brain goes down his sight should improve. With the help of a physical therapist, he was able to walk around the hospital some. He was so happy about being out of his hospital bed. The walking wore him out but he is thrilled that he still has the capabilities of being completely mobile.
In 3 to 6 months he’ll under go an additional surgery to replace the missing skull. Until then he will have to wear some type of protective helmet. We feel so blessed that Wes is improving so quickly and did not sustain more lasting effects. Thank you again for all the prayers in our families behalf. We’ll continue to keep you posted on his progress.