It's been difficult to give a clear picture of Harriet's progress up to this point because things have been changing almost by the hour. As soon as we arrived in Takanaki Base Hospital, Ro and I were warned that it would be like this, and that lung injuries like Harriet's tend to get worse before they get better. There have been times over the last week or so that we've gone from despair that she's gone backwards, to cautious optimism that she seems to be making some progress, then back to despair again in the space of just a few hours.

Today Harriet is still in ICU in Christchurch Public, still on a ventilator, and still quite heavily sedated. Contrary to various reports and to our great relief, she doesn't seem to have any significant head injury. While she can respond to us from time to time with raised eyebrows, smiles, and thumbs up signs, she is mostly in a twilight zone due to the medication she's on, and currently doesn't remember much from visit to visit. We're hoping this blog will also provide Harriet with a bit of a record to refer to later when she's sober again.

Harriet has a number of injuries - a real lesson in just how fragile we are in comparison to a car, or a 44 tonne truck and trailer for that matter. Her main issue remains her lungs, and getting her breathing again on her own is everyone's main priority for now. On that subject, she seems to have turned a corner over the last day or so. On Monday her lungs were struggling and we were getting mentally prepared for her to spend perhaps two more weeks on the ventilator - which those of you who've visited her or been down this track yourselves will understand is not a happy prospect. But over the last day or so it looks like she's starting to get on top of things; her bruised lungs are beginning to regain some elasticity, she's able to breathe a bit deeper (or at least accept larger "breaths" from the machine), and she's doing a better job of extracting oxygen from the air she does get.

If she can continue on this track for I think another day, there's a good chance she might be able to start coming off the ventilator. I don't know exactly what that involves yet, but it seems to be a step by step process that could begin over the weekend. There's still lots of ifs and buts around all this but we're really hoping she might be free of plastic tubes, breathing by herself, and talking to us again some time next week. Fingers still tightly crossed - by now we are well aware that there's heaps of scope for things not to play out quite like this, but we're ever hopeful.