Homecoming

Hello all! About time for an update, eh?

Well it's been a busy week, to say the least. The biggest news recently is that we now have a discharge date from CareMeridian...and it's this coming Wednesday, the 18th! Although it's sooner than we would have liked, we're excited to have Dad home. And this time we'll be prepared. With lots of help, work is underway to "handicap" the downstairs bedroom in our house. It'll be a little bit of a time crunch this week, but we're much more prepared than a month ago! Hopefully he'll be ready to go to an acute in-house rehab facility sooner than later, but until then it looks like he'll be having therapy here at home, or on an out-patient basis somewhere nearby.

The other news is that chances are his trach will be out by the time he comes home. As I wrote last week, he's been downsized as far as possible. They've now plugged his trach, and if he tolerates that for 72 hours, they can go ahead and remove the trach all together. We are really hoping he does not come home with a trach, as that would substantially increase the level of care we'd need to provide, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Mom will be starting back to work on September 7th, and I'll be starting classes here at Moorpark (only twice a week) this coming Tuesday. It will be nice for both us to have something else to concentrate on, and it shouldn't be too difficult to care for Dad. Luckily he's bearing weight on one of his legs which makes his transfers easier, and I'm getting better at doing it by myself (never thought I'd say this, but my dad actually weighs less than me now! Ah!!). A lot of what we'll be doing this week is learning how to care for him on a daily basis; feedings, feeding schedules, transfers, physical therapy, etc...hopefully NOT trach care. We'll see.

It's been an interesting summer (and you can imagine what I mean by interesting), but Mom and I are hanging in there, and Dad's condition is slowly improving. We've really appreciated the support we've received and it really will be nice to have him home. Some days are better than others (as his visitors yesterday surely noted), but that's what we've come to expect out of his recovery process. It is what it is.

I'll try to keep you all informed and updated, this is going to be a pretty crazy week, though, so be warned: he may be home before my next post!