It’s been about a week and a half since Dad has been back in acute rehab, so I thought I would do a recap. It’s been a busy week!
The physical therapist, on the second day back to rehab, commented and was encouraged Dad had not lost a lot of the progress he made by leaving and spending some time on Grant 5. That was the first bit of good news! Then last Tuesday, one of my Mom’s three sisters, my Aunt Melody flew in from Arizona to help us out. I had been so busy running around, I couldn’t wait for her visit! While she’s staying with us for 3 weeks, she gives me some time to breath, my Mom company and support, and Dad, well she makes him laugh. Laughter truly is the best medicine and it has been a joy to have her here, she is so good for the soul.
Lastly, Friday, PJ and I sat in on Dad’s afternoon therapies. It was the first time either of us had the time to sit in and observe what therapy was doing with Dad to help him improve. With the lack of language and writing on Dad’s end we were pretty clueless and had only our own research and some vague answers from the nursing staff to go on. Everyone at the hospital does their part and the level of care is exceptional (the only complaint I have is that the clothes I first brought to rehab for him disappeared, something that apparently happens, good thing none of it was designer clothing!), but not one of them knows the whole scope of everything it seems. That’s ok though because I do not have a problem asking the same question to a hundred different people just to get to the right person and get an answer. This particular afternoon he was only scheduled for PT (physical therapy) and Speech. OT (occupational therapy) had done an hour with him that morning, so unfortunately we didn’t have the opportunity to sit through their session. Again, with the acute rehab they are required to do three hours of therapy spread throughout the course of a day, five days a week. It doesn’t sound like much to you and I, but to someone who has had a stroke and is physically and mentally exhausted all day long, three hours is a lot out of your day. Add on top of that, the myriad of Doctors, RNs, technicians and even students who come in to check on you, monitor you, feed you, bath you, change you, all requiring you to move, shift, sit up, lie down. Then take something as simple as eating, which prior to the stroke maybe only took 15 minutes to have let’s say dinner. Now it takes a half an hour, forty five minutes and you don’t even finish all your food, because you’re that tired from just trying to feed yourself. I can only imagine the exhaustion Dad must feel daily.
It was really good to sit in as a silent observer with him though. We all went up to the fifth floor where rehab has their own gym and watched as the therapist worked on Dad’s legs and hips. He does have some movement in his right leg and hip, mostly tensing his thigh and calf muscles right now and beginning to try to pull his leg up to a bent position. The goal is to continue building up Dad’s left side, which is already so strong with the eventuality that his right side will then begin to mimic his left side. It truly is amazing how our bodies work. That was PT time and the therapist said he did great. Speech therapy, on the other hand didn’t go so well and I could tell Dad was not a fan of it at all. You can read exactly how he feels just by looking at him (I am my father’s daughter in that respect). The therapist confirmed what we had all already suspected. Dad is still not consistent with his yes’s and no’s. Now some of the questions asked to determine and improve his consistency with this, are questions like “Do you turn on the TV before you watch it,” or “Do you brush your teeth before putting the toothpaste on the brush.” He has improved since he began therapy though and was around 65% correct in his answers as of last week. The other thing she mentioned was that when Dad answers a question, he tends to then give that same answer to subsequent questions. For example, when I was there, she wrote on a dry erase board 2+2=. Dad got the correct answer and wrote 4 but when she then wrote 5+2=, he wrote 4 again as the answer. It was only after she asked him if that was right that he understood and realized what the correct answer was. She said to me, as everyone else has, all the connections are there is his brain, they are just getting a little jumbled up on their way out. That’s what time and therapy are for. Improvement is improvement and I do see his improvement every day.
Sunday, after directing my Aunt to where my parents church (Redeemer Lutheran) was, I headed over to see Dad. I’ve noticed Sundays are pretty quiet at the hospital. I like that. It’s very peaceful. Dad had the TV on when I walked in. The nurse came in while I was there and mentioned something about it being Superbowl Sunday, I suppose because at 10:30 in the morning they were already talking non-stop about it on the TV. She asked if Dad was excited. He rolled his eyes and I burst out laughing. Dad is not a fan of sports at all. The nurse then asked, “Well you must like the commercials at least?” Dad rolled his eyes again and I laughed again. I said “Yeah, he could probably care less about either of those things,” to which Dad looked at me and pointed in agreement. We are all growing accustomed to learning new ways of communicating with Dad and he with us. After the conversation about the Superbowl they put him in his wheelchair and as soon as the nurse left he began pointing towards the door of his room. It took me half a second to realize he wanted out of the room. So we left. Directly out and to the left of his room there is a waiting area, surrounded on two sides with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Penobscot River. I wheeled him over so he had a river view of the chunks of ice floating downstream. The local newspaper, the Bangor Daily News happened to be sitting on a chair. The next hour was spent with us flipping through the Sunday paper, exchanging sections, pointing articles out to one another, catching up on what was going on in the greater Bangor area and the northern part of the state, called by everyone up here, the County. Before I knew it, it was time for me to head out to meet Mom, PJ and Aunt Mel for some lunch at Governor’s Restaurant (yes, shout out to best French fries ever), before we all headed back to see Dad together.
All and all yesterday was a stellar day. It was a great way to end one week and begin the next. You have to take it one day at a time and always remember, no one needs to save the world in a day.
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