Day 15 of Jim's Recovery

Holy cow, my mood swings are like the tire swing out back. First, I'm swinging high feeling great and then the darn swing has to slow down and I'm barely moving. What is with this? Today was a good day. Dad made some progress and didn't make progress. I know that this is how it will be for a while. I know and still have hope that he will get better. But once I got home tonight it was like the weight of everything just came crashing down. So I apologize if tonight's blog sounds pessimistic. I'm just dealing with the stupid ups and downs of trauma!!

Well, I was glad because I was able to spend a considerable amount of time with Dad today. Mom had to stay home to take care of some housekeeping stuff and so she watched Sage for me. When I got in Dad seemed pretty tired. Mom says he is tired until about noon then he will start to wake up. I listened to some of your suggestions and brought some old baby toys from my girls for Dad to work with. I brought a peg animal puzzle, a piggy bank with coins, and a Rocky and Bullwinkle coloring book (I figured he might recognize them better then Littlest Pet Shop!)

To make Dad not feel so silly working with the baby stuff I told him my girls had sent the games for him to play with. I said for him just to work with me because they really wanted him to use the games. So I started with the puzzle. I showed him how to take out a piece and put it back. Then I told him I wanted him to use his right hand. I lifted his hand to one of the pieces and told him to grab the peg, which he did, and he pulled the piece out. I told him to put it back. He slowly slid the piece up the board to the correct spot with his right hand. Then slowly tried to move his fingers out of the way to fit the piece in the groove. He was almost there when he used his left hand to help his right hand move the piece into position. He did it though!! We did this three or four times. He also could find the right place to put a piece if I handed it to him so that he had to think about where the piece went instead of just moving it back into place. He did this mostly with his right hand or using both hands. This is awesome because the PT told us to make sure when he uses his hands he uses both at the same time or uses the right!

Next I moved on to the piggy bank. This is a plastic piggy bank with large plastic coins that babies use for dexterity (obviously.) So I made Dad hold the piggy bank with his left hand and put the coins in the slot with his right hand. I had to hand him the coins and move his hand over the piggy bank but Dad did all the work putting the coins into the slot. Sometimes he would cheat and use his left pointer finger to press the coins into the slot. There are about 10 coins and I made him put all the coins into the slot three times. He did awesome. I also think he liked using both the puzzle and the piggy bank because he knew it was helping him work with his hands. No one else was in the room so I don't think he felt stupid either.

He had already been tired when I walked in so after doing those exercises he began to get tired again. So I put the games away and walked back over to the bed. Dad asked where Mom was and I told him she wouldn't be able to make it in today. He made a sad face and say "ohhhh." I look at this to be positive because it means he knows who Mom is and he wants her to be there and he knows she has been coming. Then Dad began to babble about something so I leaned in close to try to catch what he was saying. He turned his head away from me and mumbled a bit then stopped. So I just waited to see if he was going to finish talking. After a minute he turned back to look at me and his eyes went wide with surprise like he forgot I was there. Then he scrunched his face and asked "what?" I said he had been talking to me and I was just waiting to hear what else he had to say. Then he said "leave me." I said "Sorry, I'll leave you alone, but I will just be over in this chair if you need me." Dad gets distracted and forgets what he is talking about really easy.

Dad slept for about a half hour or 45 min and I just sat in the chair working the crossword puzzle. When Dad woke up he told me he needed to go to the bathroom. I called for the nurses and left the room. They did take the catheter out last night but Dad was unable to relieve himself, which means his bladder would not empty. This is good and bad. Good because it means that he still has muscle memory there and won't just wet the bad. This is also bad because they have to retrain the bladder to relieve itself. How in the world do you retrain your bladder? After a while the nurses came back out. To put things mildly Dad is just having a hard time relieving anything on his own. And that's all we have to say about that because we don't want Dad to get embarrassed.

And Dad is getting embarrassed, which is another great emotion Dad is exhibiting. The speech therapist (ST) came in to work with Dad today. They are still trying to get him to swallow properly. What happens is they will give him a spoonful of water and he will swallow. But the brain is not using the muscles in the throat to switch from the lung pipe to the stomach pipe when he swallows or the muscle triggers too late. So Dad will swallow and about 20 seconds later he will cough as the liquid hits his lungs. Now when we swallow and it goes down the wrong pipe it doesn't actually hit our lungs our bodies have an automatic response to cough when something begins to go down the wrong pipe. But Dad's brain is not registering the liquid going down the wrong pipe until it is too late and it hits the lungs. So we have to be really careful because he could get pneumonia.

Then the ST showed Erin and I some stuff we could work on to get Dad speaking again. She said picture and word association is a great game. We write the name of someone in a picture and then show him the word and the picture together. I told her I had been trying to get him to color and she said that was great and said trying to get him to write was another good skill to work on. So I grab the pad I had brought from yesterday and she asked Dad if he could write his name. He couldn't. So she had Erin hold Dad's hand and write his name with him. Then we asked Dad to trace it; to take a turn. I began to say "Do it Dad, you can do it. Come on don't give up. I won't let you give up. You can do it Dad." Then he turned to me and said "you embarrassing." I wanted to cry and am crying again as I type this. He told me I was embarrassing him. I felt and feel so awful. I think when the physical therapist are there he gets embarrassed that he can't do things, because I was saying the same stuff to him when we were working on the puzzles and he kept trying. Sorry Dad I didn't mean to embarrass you.

Anyways (sniff, sniff), the ST said that it was good that Dad was feeling embarrassment. Then she tried a different skill. She drew a circle with a smiley face in it and asked if he could draw one. Dad looked at it and said "oh" then began mumbling stuff. He then took the pencil, with his right hand, and drew some marks that looked like hair and a neck and shoulders. Dad used to always finish our doodles! The ST was really happy with this and said now she knew where to start with him. So we are going to work with him drawing more.

Directly after the ST left the physical therapist came in to help Dad stand and work his arms. I told them about Dad using the puzzle and piggy bank and they thought that was great. So they decided to see if he could brush his teeth and shave. As they were moving Dad to sit up he said as plain as day and the first clear, full sentence, I have heard him say. He said "My ankle hurts." The PT's knew that he was having trouble with his ankle but only knew this because he would grimace when they would move it or stretch it. So the fact that he told them it hurt and what specifically hurt is fabulous. Byron (Dad's best friend) was there and he was shocked to hear Dad say a full sentence.

Unfortunately, I had to leave right as they were getting him sat up so I don't know how much he did with the PT's. I will talk with Erin and get back to you all. Okay, talked to Erin sooner then later. She said that they put the toothbrush up to Dad's mouth but he didn't know what to do with it and that he did not want to try to shave. She told me that Dad was too focused on his robe, he kept getting embarrassed that he was exposing too much. It is truely rediculous how those stupid gowns work. Don't they have pants with snaps? We have diapers with velrow and underwear with snaps for babies that provided easy access. Why can't we have that for adults? Geezy Peezy, I will look into this tomorrow.

A good thing Erin said was that she started singing the alphabet to Dad once the PT's left. She said once she got to "F" Dad said "G,H." So she started again, she got to "B" and he said "C,D." WooHoo serious progress. Way to go Ebs!

P.S. Marsha, I am so broken hearted to hear of "aunt" Joan. I love her so much and hate to hear that she is declining. My heart goes out to you and all your family. We will be doing the same for Dad and not let him know until he is well. He will be tragically sad if she passes while he is in the hospital. Love to you all, we love Joan so much! And you can come see Dad now whenever you can.