Update from David - December 15 & 16

Yesterday, December 15, I visited Dad at 3:00 pm and found him in bed in a darkened room. He was not wearing day clothes. After greeting me, he was soporific for the rest of the 40 minute visit. His nurse attended to an IV drip that she said was an antibiotic.

I asked how long Dad had been on Ritalin, and she said that she had started him on his first dose an hour before at 2:00 pm.

His daily schedule was posted and I saw that he has physical therapy non-stop from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm daily. The last hour is therapy during lunch. I thought maybe that was why he was so sleepy in the afternoon.

On December 16, I made a point of arriving in the morning, and found Dad at 10:00 am engaged in therapy. He was dressed in street clothes in a wheelchair and working in a large, specialized P.T. room down the hall from his room. There were four other patients and therapists also active in the room, so it was a hive of activity.

A speech therapist was with him and explained that they were discussing that Dad has had trouble sleeping soundly through the night because of noises and disruption on the floor. I asked him about his apnea machine and he said that he has been using it.

The speech therapist was succeeded by two physical therapists. They had Dad move himself, with their help, from the wheelchair over a board to an adjacent, raised, work-out mat. They encouraged him to keep himself sitting upright with his shoulders back and his head up. The lead therapist had him do an exercise with cards on a table before him numbered 1 to 12. She asked him to use his left arm to reach out to the cards and arrange them in numerical order. She had the table pushed away in such a way that Dad had to extend his arm fully to reach the most distant. He was able to do this task with help from the therapists pushing up from his elbow on the longest reaches.

The therapist then presented Dad with three colored buckets hanging on pegs on a stand that was arms-length from him. She asked him to name their colors and he did that immediately. She asked him to put the balls from the middle bucket into the uppermost bucket. He reached with his left arm and dragged it a foot closer! I guffawed, but she put it back and explained that reaching was part of the exercise.

I then left to keep an appointment. I returned at 2:30 pm to find Dad sitting in his room in his wheelchair. He still had his street shirt on although his legs were covered by a hospital gown. He remained alert and conversational during our visit, and he expressed interest in the day of the month, remarking that he supposed that it was the 15th. Close. It was the 16th.