Thursday, March 24, 2011

Thursday Morning Update

Hi everyone...it's Karen now. Susan just left and I'm not sure if she'll report on last night or not. It was a pretty quiet night, so there was not much new to report. She mentioned that he slept pretty well, and was at least able to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.


This morning....things are going good. Dad is now in a Acute Care Center, just another division of the Neuro Care Unit. He has no I.V., and is not hooked up to any machines now, other then still monitoring his oxygen levels. This is all good news. The patient care needs are much more 'basic' in this wing. (Help with baths, blood pressure monitoring, medications, if needed, etc.) Dad still cannot stand or sit up unassisted, so he will need help with most things still for now...but those needs are improving daily.

The new nurse (Eric) came in to do his routine evaluations. Dad is responding more quickly to the things he's asked to do (stick your tongue out, follow my fingers with your eyes, give me the thumbs up sign). The great news is he is moving his right leg today. Not huge movements, but movements nontheless. And for the past couple of days he has not had any feeling in his right side, from his head to his toes. But this morning when Eric touched the right side of his face, dad could feel it! This, accompanied with being able to command some movement in his leg, is very encouraging!


The team of neurologists stopped by and when they came in, dad and I were laughing. They asked what we were laughing about and I said 'his breakfast', and proceeded to show them his 'toast'. The main Dr....(Dr. DeWitt) gasped and said 'what is it?'. I said 'toast'. And she said, 'no really...what is it?'. And I told her it was bread, blended and mushed, and formed into the shape of toast. All 9 of the them came over to peek at the 'toast' and had a newfound sympathy for their patients. None of them had ever seen that before and couldn't believe they actually tried to feed that to people. LOL! But we all got a good laugh, which felt great to have something to smile about! Anyway, then they got back to evaluating dad. They immediately saw movement in his right leg, and wondered if it was mainly a reflex movement. So they asked him to move his right let, and sure enough...he did! I explained about him being able to feel touch on the right side of his face today, and they were also very pleased about that. They told dad, he was doing really well and keep up the hard work....then told him goodbye, as he is being moved to rehabilitation this afternoon for certain now. **Just a side note: I told my mom that I believe we are entitled to some sort of 'discount' in the hospital bill, because they have dad's tremor (which he has in his left arm that he was diagnosed with about 6 months ago), as a learning tool. Dr. DeWitt took several minutes observing the tremor and talking to the residents and students about it. Anyway....I just thought maybe dad should be compensated for providing them with a learning experience. LOL!

Dad is resting now....after choking down a bite or two of his breakfast. I explained to him that because he is no longer on IV fluids, he's got to try to eat as much as possible, so he can get his strength back for the hard work ahead of him. He shrugged and agreed to eat a little bit.

The nurse told me that it would most likely be late this afternoon, that dad would be moved to rehab. The bad news, is that he may have to have a shared room at first, until a single room opens up. This will not be welcome news to him, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that something will change and that will not have to happen. If it does...we'll just keep doing our best to keep his spirits up, so he can get better, and get home!

I'll post again later, but I don't expect any major changes to report, until his big move! So, hopefully it'll be a quiet day, resting...and building up a reserve of the much needed strength he'll need later. Thank you for the continued prayers!

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