This is a tiny but very promising news item from today's Washington Post on Tim Johnson's recovery. He's actually starting to do some work from the hospital and, perhaps most important, he is reading and speaking in full sentences. The primary area of his brain that was damaged by the hemmorhage associated with the venal malformation in his brain was the area controlling speech so this implies that Senator Johnson is on the road to a full recovery:
Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) is reading news clippings and starting to do some office work from the hospital . . .
"We do not anticipate him back [in the Senate] for several weeks," spokeswoman Julianne Fisher said. "We are bringing work to him rather than him coming to us. His first priority still is rehabilitation."
Johnson has been undergoing physical, occupational and speech therapy since he was transferred to rehabilitation from intensive care at George Washington University Hospital last month. He recently began to read and speak in full sentences, his doctors said.
Here's some more detail from the Argus Leader, a major South Dakota paper. It make take a couple more months but I am feeling confident that Tim Johnson will make a full recovery and return to the Senate. And, reading between the lines, it does sound as though his family was a little more concerned than they let on as to his condition . .