We celebrated Father's Day and Dad's Birthday today since everyone could get together. Dad took Mom on a field trip from the hospital to Jenni's where we all were waiting to have dinner and celebrate Father's Day and Dad's Birthday (which is Monday). She came and had dinner with us and then Dad took her back to the hospital for the night. We had a great time!
This past week insurance says it is time for her to get ready to either go home and have in home rehab or goto a skilled nursing center. We decided we would really like to have her home and so we have been busy getting trained the past few days on how to help mom like they do at the hospital. Dad has been meeting people at the house to know exactly how to prepare the home for a wheel chair, railings, etc. 24/7 care will be required when she comes home for a while. They are thinking Wednesday to send her home, we asked for an extension to have time to get the house ready - but don't know if insurance will allow it. (We were very surprised it was happening so FAST.)
Mom does have her feeding tube, and pic line out, and isn't hooked up to anything. She is eating on her own, feeding herself. She walked 150 feet Friday when I was with her, with the assistance of a therapist by her side to catch her if she were to fall, cheering her on. She can stand on her own but her left side is still weak, we have to be careful to make sure she doesn't fall. We have to be so careful with her left arm and hand it is very sore and hurts from all the excercise at physical therapy. She still needs assistance to get up, and down, in and out of bed, etc. All of us have learned to move her from a wheel chair into bed and back again and all the things the physical therapist have been doing with her, and then we've worked with the occupational therapist to learn movement/motion excercises to get her left arm hopefully moving soon, and last but not least the speech therapist who seems to focus on brain games. When Caitlin and I were there he was doing different games like take 1 + 9 = ? (10) - 4 = ? (6) + 9 = ? (15) - 4 = (11) + 9 = ? over and over (+9) (-4), she did computer brain games on lumosity.com, and had questions like February, November, March, and August put them in the correct order, she did really well at everything he was throwing at her. Anyway we've been focused on training this past week and it will continue into this next week.
We are working on getting the house in order, Dad spent today with Peter getting the cooler working, get materials to build a ramp into the house, and railings for Mom to hold onto.
They have moved mom from a regular room to a transitional room - which is a larger room with a hospital bed, and a queen bed in it, so people can spend the night and learn how to prepare to take care of someone through the night and have help. Dad had a sleep over in the hospital last night, to know how to best assist Mom through the night. He didn't sleep very well, but thinks once they are home they'll sleep better! I guess he had so much fun he was going to do it again tonight. Good job Dad! (I'm sure he's reading this say 'ha ha. yeah, right!')
We appreciate all your prayers, they have helped to get her this far. Keep praying for the left side to get strong and that right arm to move. I'm sure we'll need help once we get her home. We are working on a schedule now, filling it with family first and going from there. We'll keep you posted. If you have any questions give me a call - Becky 801-369-4152 cell or dbjrichards@hotmail.com
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