simplelife2
2-1-11, 2:37pm
He's been in the rehab area of the hospital for awhile now and it's going well and been worthwhile fighting with the doctors on getting the placement. He's made excellent progress and one of the doctors even commented on how surprising his improvement has been. His speech therapy has been going so well that today for the first time in weeks he actually has been allowed to eat http://www.asktheasshats.com/forum/images/smilies/bounce.gif after just IV nutrition. It's been fascinating to learn how complicated swallowing is and how many muscles are involved. He only gets pureed foods and has to be hand fed, but it really is a huge breakthrough. I can't tell you how relieved I am.
The fantastic news is he now has a release date for Thursday. The bad news is that I have to fight the Midwest blizzard to get to the hospital tonight to feed him and tomorrow afternoon for home-care training. Luckily, the hospital is only a few miles away, but I am not looking forward to it. I go at 4:30 today and I'm going to leave as soon as we are done with eating and the training isn't until 1 p.m. so I hope to miss the worst of it. If they cancel the training, that means they'll have to keep him in longer.
I am so thankful for all of the time I've spent with him talking and looking at old pictures. We've also played a lot of games and built puzzles as part of his therapy. It's been a very stressful few weeks. (Lots of tension especially with my sister. I dreamed last night that I was stuck in a pit of mud and she was furiously coming after me with a big rubber mallet. Yikes! I'm definitely not sharing that one with her. lol) I am so hopeful that he will be able to celebrate his 87th birthday with us on March 12.
Right now I believe we are living on borrowed time. Each setback has been worse and harder to overcome and he has made it abundantly clear that his heart just isn't totally in the fight. I'm glad he's felt safe to have several frank conversations with me about this and hope they give me strength when the time comes. But, I guess some part of him still wants to stick around.
Thanks everyone for the kind words and good vibes. It really has meant a lot.
The fantastic news is he now has a release date for Thursday. The bad news is that I have to fight the Midwest blizzard to get to the hospital tonight to feed him and tomorrow afternoon for home-care training. Luckily, the hospital is only a few miles away, but I am not looking forward to it. I go at 4:30 today and I'm going to leave as soon as we are done with eating and the training isn't until 1 p.m. so I hope to miss the worst of it. If they cancel the training, that means they'll have to keep him in longer.
I am so thankful for all of the time I've spent with him talking and looking at old pictures. We've also played a lot of games and built puzzles as part of his therapy. It's been a very stressful few weeks. (Lots of tension especially with my sister. I dreamed last night that I was stuck in a pit of mud and she was furiously coming after me with a big rubber mallet. Yikes! I'm definitely not sharing that one with her. lol) I am so hopeful that he will be able to celebrate his 87th birthday with us on March 12.
Right now I believe we are living on borrowed time. Each setback has been worse and harder to overcome and he has made it abundantly clear that his heart just isn't totally in the fight. I'm glad he's felt safe to have several frank conversations with me about this and hope they give me strength when the time comes. But, I guess some part of him still wants to stick around.
Thanks everyone for the kind words and good vibes. It really has meant a lot.