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LANDSTUHL, Germany (AP) -- Rescued POW Jessica Lynch's mood has been lifted by visits from her family -- not to mention the applesauce she had been craving and a teddy bear with a red-white-and-blue ribbon.
Lynch's parents, Deadra and Gregory, two siblings and a cousin arrived Sunday from West Virginia. Their visits have been private, and as frequent as allowed. Her mother joined her for lunch Monday.
"She was in good spirits," said Landstuhl Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Marie Shaw.
When her parents can't be with her, they have left a stand-in: the white teddy bear with a red-white-and-blue ribbon. There's also a stuffed bunny by her bed.
Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk, was in stable condition Monday in intensive care, where she was being treated for a head wound, an injury to her spine and fractures to her right arm, both legs, and her right foot and ankle.
She has endured several surgeries, but doctors have said the prognosis for Lynch's full recovery is excellent. And the addition of applesauce to her diet is just one outward measure.
In one of Lynch's first telephone conversations with her parents after her dramatic rescue from an Iraqi hospital in Nasiriyah on April 1, she told her father that she hadn't eaten in eight days.
After arriving in Landstuhl, she put in her order: turkey, steamed carrots and apple sauce. But until the introduction of the apple sauce, she was only being fed intravenously. She has been drinking lots of fruit juice.
Lynch, a private first class, was taken prisoner when her unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, was ambushed in Nasiriyah on March 23. Eight bodies buried near the hospital where Lynch was held have been identified as members of her unit.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
