In Which Your Faithful Narrator Gives Props to 3rd Worst

I have a friend, we've been friends for going on, I think seven years. We've met twice, I think. But we've been reading each other for almost seven years. Okay, maybe we met only once. No, I think its been twice. Yes, indeed, twice. Once in her home town and once we met a movie theatre to see a movie that was filmed partially in her hometown. Her hometown is cool. Nice place, her hometown. Though, she'd kill me if I told you were her hometown was and I don't want to that to happen because if that did happen I wouldn't be able to pollute cyberspace with my incessant "In Which Your Faithful Narrator..." posts and the world just be a sadder place. So, for world peace and happiness, I will not divulge the location of 3rdWorst's hometown.

Now then, with that being said (a phrase my store manager uses often) I must commence with the propage for 3rdWorst. In order to truly understand and comprehend the propage I'm about to give you must first read this entry. I'll wait. Really, I will. Come back when you're finished (please note the proper grammar in that statement, people are finished, turkeys are done). Okay, ready for the propage?

I dedicate these two youtube vidoes to 3rdworsts nerdiness, geekiness, and basic smartypantsness...




Okay, that one is kind of fun. Then there's this one. I shall call this the
Necessary Roughness Propage (the dude flies across the country alot). And, since this propage is, in fact in celebration of 3rdworsts nerdygeekinesssmartypantsness, we should probably should call this the Nerdfighter Award. All I have to say is this: where was security? Hello... that's neither here nor there: on with the second propage!

In Which Your Faithful Narrator Dips His Big Toe Into the Pool of "Normalcy

It felt good to type that title. It really did. I know that the "In Which Your Faithful Narrator..." titles annoy some, but for some reason I really like using them, I'm not exactly sure why, but I do.

Things have come back to normal, for the most part. My father is safely tucked into a rehabilitation center. He is happy and anxious to get going. I think he is relieved that he came through as well as he did and any damage has been "minimal." The power of prayer is evident in his recovery, I firmly believe that. He had his first good shower since Friday and he looked even better after that. His hair was combed and he had on good clean clothes. He was, for lack of a better term, a happy guy.

This incident has made me pause and think about my own life. I don't mean in regards to dying or anything like that, but how I want to live it. Where I want to live, etc. Since I am an only child, the responsibility falls on me. I'm not angry or upset about that, its just a fact that I have come to accept. As a result of this I have to weigh geography and distance in any decision I might make about applying for and taking a library job. I don't/can't go too far away. I don't know when something like this might happen again.

After the excitement of this past week, I look forward to a continued return to normalcy. That, and a nice cold beer.

Dad is officially out of the hospital and now in a rehabilitation center. It is a very nice place, with good nurses, and people. He was released from the hospital about noon time on Thursday and came bundled up in a wheelchair. He looked a bit like a gypsy with a heavy blanket over his head and another one over his lap. He was holding the little radio we took up to him on his lap. He had six days growth beard and hospital johnnies on. He looked like he needed a good scrubbing.

He was able to clean himself up a bit. He washed his face, shaved (with an electric razor, he is on a blood thinner). He combed his, brushed his teeth, and then changed from his johnnies into a pair of flannel pj bottoms and t-shirt. He was able to do it all himself. I helped him a bit with shaving and had to help get one of his feet into the right pant hole, but other than that, he was able to dress and clean himself just fine.

He seems to be able feed himself. There is a little question about his swallowing capabilities, but I think if there is an issue there it is but a small one. He had a therapist come in and do an evaluation this afternoon shortly after he got there. His strength is good, he grip and push, and pull pretty well. His balance was good, too. He stood for about five mintues with no problem. He said he was tired, but that's expected after the ordeal he has been through.

His speech is slightly slurred, but not too bad. I have to tell the folks around him that he does in fact have a Brooklyn accent so its not all slurring! (lol).

I popped in a little while ago, after dinner, and he was sitting in his wheel chair, with his feet on the bed watching the news. He was in good spirits and ready to get to work. I expect him to be there for about a week or so.

The Ernie we have today is so much different than the Ernie we were dealing with over the weekend, particularly on Monday night. He was combative and halucinatory. He kept thinking he was in Pittsburgh and in Rockefeller Center circa 1950. The funny thing is that he knew he was hallucinating and tried his hardest to get himself grounded. He started going through "facts" that he knew: "world war 2 went from 1939-1945," "Hitler, the president, I mean the Dictator, was defeated," "George Bush is the president," "Hillary Clinton is running against him" (okay, he kind of got that one wrong, but he got the gist, if you will.

As I said earlier, the rehabilitation center is good and well staffed. It is fairly new, too, I don't think it is more than three years old. Its warm, which is good since it is roughly 7 degrees outside right now and clean.

my dad is being released from the hospital sometime today. he will be going to a rehab facility for a while, how long? i'm not sure, but i have a feeling it won't be too terribly long. he is ready to get out, of course. we saw him yesterday and he was out of bed sitting in a chair listening to the bible on tape. he was able to feed himself pretty well yesterday. he still has a little slurring of speech, but not too bad. he can walk okay. he is lucid and conversational, in short, it looks a whole hell of a lot better than it did monday night.

We expect my dad to be released from the hospital tomorrow. That sentence feels so good to type. He will be released and transferred to a rehabilitation center. We aren't sure how long he will be there, but I assume it won't be for very long. The last two days have been amazing. Yesterday morning he had a hard time eating, so I had to help him by feeding him. Last night he was able to feed himself a little better, his range of motion was a bit shakey, but he at least got the food (speghetti) into mouth with difficulty, but it was there. Today for lunch he had no problems. He was a bit slow, but more decisive. His speech is slightly slurred. His Brooklyn accent covers some of it, but not all. It sounds like his tongue is just a bit too heavy for him. He can walk and he doesn't need much help. He can lift himself in bed. I feel like I've been watching a miracle in progress. The outward signs look good. I'm not really sure if his comprehension and/or short/long term memory have been affected. I guess we'll see in the weeks to come.

He is excited about the next step because that brings him that much closer to coming home.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for my dad's recovery, but also for myself and my mom.

i just called the hospital to find out how my dad was doing. i didn't go up to spend the night this evening. we didn't get any frantic calls from the nurse telling us that he was crazy. i didn't hear any distraught voice begging for me to come up and help him, that's what i heard last night. i talked to his nurse just now and she said "are you the one who was here last night?" i said i was. she said simply "he's a totally different person tonight." i about cried.

i have never seen my dad the way i saw him last night: scared, out of it, combative, wimpering (at times). i was seriously afraid that his stroke had really affected his emotional center in his brain. but, and i think i wrote about this in my last post, i started to look at what my dad needed. he sleeps on his right side. he had been tethered to his bed with bed restraits because he kept wanting to get out of bed. he wasn't able to get good sleep because he doesn't sleep on his back. he can doze, but not sleep. so i carefully took off his restraints and then i realized that his bed was at an angle. his head was higher than his body. he couldn't get comfortable. so, i lowered his bed so he was laying down completely. with in minutes he was asleep. and quickly was in a deep sleep. my dad snores, but when he is really tired he breethes very deep. i mean from his diaphram deep. he doesn't breathe so much as suck in air. i think he breathes through his nose out of his mouth. his whole chest cavity raises when he breathes like that. its actually a bit frightening.

he slept for two hours and had to go the bathroom. that was the first big test of the night. he woke up, still scared. he still didn't know where he was. it was frustrating because i had to get a nurse to unhook him from his iv. get him to the bathroom, then hook him back up and let him sleep. it took me two times of doing this before i realized something: at home he gets out of bed on the right side. my mom's side of the bed is on the left. his iv was on the left of his bed, but he kept getting out of bed on the right. that was causing problems and confusion, so, before he went to bed after a "bathroom break" i made sure to put the iv holder on the right side of the bed. that helped immeasurably. it made life much easier. because of his condition he was wearing adult diapers. this was kind of tough to deal with on a few levels, i won't go into those, but i'm sure you can figure them out. but they were also good because in his half-sleep mind, he was pushing down and pulling up pajama bottoms.

everytime he got back into bed, he would go into a deep sleep. everytime he woke up to go to the bathroom he was a little easier to handle. also, something i learned yesterday was this: urinary tract infections can cause older people to become combative and at times disoriented. he had for the first two days a cathater. that can casue a UTI. i mentioned that to the nurse and they were going to check it. i don't know if they gave him anything, but as the night progressed and he used the bathroom, i would check the water to see what was there. it got clearer and clearer as the night went on. so whatever was going on in the part of his body had cleared up nicely.

he continued to sleep deeply. how deep asleep was he? at about 0600 or so, he had not one, but two nurses do something. one took blood and checked his blood pressure. another gave him a shot. he didn't stir or wakeup either time.

he was lucid all day. making jokes. answering questions and even asking questions. he was "there" if you know what i mean. he wasn't seeing halucinations or anything at all. he was, in his words "bored." i'll take that. really, i will.

earlier in the day he called home, he asked us to bring a radio and bible tapes to listen to. so we did. the nurse said that he has been listening to the tapes one by one this evening. he was sitting in a chair by his bed quietly listening. when she gave me this report, i just lowered my head on to my arms and thanked God. a weight lifted.

we have already gotten the next phase set up. he will be going to a rehabilitation center for a while. there are a few things he needs to work on, mainly his fine motor skills. speaking of fine motorskills, he was able to feed himself this evening. he was able to put fork in mouth. that's a big deal, too. he'd been having problems with that the last day or two.

its been amazing to watch the brain reset itself. that's what its been doing. and i'm pretty sure that the deep sleep he was able to get last night was one of the big keys. hopefully he'll be able to get a good night's sleep tonight and he'll be that much better tomorrow. i told the nurse that if she needs me to come up there to call and i'll be there as soon as i can.

this has been an adventure i don't want to soon repeat.

we got a call this morning at 0900. it was the hospital. the doctor that admitted my dad to the hospital called to ask us a quesiton: was he, my dad, an alcoholic? they wanted to make sure that they weren't dealing with someone going through alcohol withdrawl. dad was very belligerent and thrashed around a lot last night. it sounds like he was cussing a lot, too. he wants to come home. so they have him in bed restraints.

we saw him this morning, but he was asleep, we didn't want to wake him up. my mom and i think he probably needs some good sleep because he hasn't had a good night's sleep since this all went down.

the biggest thing right now, it seems is this: he doesn't know where he is. today he thought he was in coney island on the subway train. he's not, he's in a hospital in beech grove. we talked to the nurse who was caring for him this evening and she said that he has been a model patient, happy, cooperative, and was eating.

my mom and i did something today that i have dreaded i'd have to do someday. we went and looked at rehabilitation centers that have long term care facilities, in short: nursing homes. we know that we can't take care of him that way he'll need to be taken care when he is first released from the hospital. i have to work and my mom just isn't strong enough to do it all by herself. and i'm pretty sure that i'd be a nervous wreck. we looked at three places today and we found two that we really liked.

we went to see my dad this evening; he was asleep, again, but he woke up and saw us. he knows who we are. he had to go to the bathroom so we got his nurse to help him. he wanted his book that we brought for him, part of me wonders if its not a "security blanket" issue for him right: having a book nearby. i don't know, i guess we'll see.

this is very hard. so very hard.