Then This Happened.

This is an MRI of my father's brain. With an MRI they can scan his brain and create a picture showing bright areas that will allow them to locate areas that have been affected by stroke within the last two weeks. They will also show damage to the brain from past MRIs.
In the upper right scan you can see large amounts of white leaching into my father's brain, dotted with marks of black. The white is area of lost cognition, this is equal to that of an 80-90 year old brain. The black spots within the white of from past strokes that have damaged that part of his brain in those areas.
If you look to the scan just below that, to the one in the lower right, you will see what the newer strokes look like on an MRI. These come up as bright spots. In conclusion, these scans from early this morning showed the doctors that he has had at least 4 new strokes in the last 2 weeks time.
This can mean different things for many different people depending on the type of strokes, where the strokes are and how large of a stroke they have. The kind my father had were actually small ones, but because he was so limited in his speech and movement to begin with it doesn't take much to set him back.
This set of strokes added a new level of discomfort to his life. The most noticeable and painful is called spasticity. When they tried a recommended drug to get rid of the spasticity my father became so "relaxed", and out of it that he did not know anyone around him, could not react to anything happening around him, and had no gag reflex at all.
They have since removed him from this drug and he has slowly started to return to what is assumed to be his new normal, which is assumed to be non-mobile at this point. His speech is very difficult at this point and he still has a lot of trouble feeding himself.

It's Been A While.

In the last post I talked about my dad being being in rehab for anywhere up to three months. Well it is about 3 days shy of that three months and as of last week he was moved from the temporary care part of the rehab facility to the more permanent floor until we could find someplace, a care facility, foster home for adults, or a nursing home, in which we wanted to place him.
This move put quite a bit of stress on my father as he thought that the 3rd floor was where the people went when they were "really bad off". Essentially he thought we were dumping him off on the 3rd floor and forgetting about his rehab, and any hope of him getting any better at all. He remained agitated after his move to the 3rd floor even though we were able to bring some of his things around him, he was still taken down to therapy, and some of his favorite nurses actually worked on this floor as well. It was hard seeing him so unhappy but there was no where else to move him at this time. According to law he had to be moved from the temporary unit at this time and we have put his name on several waiting lists for homes that we like, but none of them have a bed available for him yet.

Soul Tired.

So, it has been a strange week and a half. My dad is still in rehab. Like I (think I) said, he will be there for one month to three. Last week we got a call from the rehab facility saying that he had awoken to have some drooping of the Left side of his face (opposite of last time) and was feeling numb over his Whole body. He was transported to the hospital via an ambulance.
My mother had been sick with a horrible migraine from the day he went into the rehab facility on, she was not able to even leave her bed to go to the hospital to see what was wrong with him. So, I went and was met there by my aunt Diane. We waited there as they did some blood work and scanned to see if there was any new bleeding in his brain. Hours later (much longer than it should have taken) they came back to tell us that there was no new bleeding and the consensus was to return him to the rehab facility. He was very tired, and VERY confused. While he was waiting for transport from the hospital to the rehab facility my aunt and I left him to sleep, I went to pick up my mom and bring her to meet him at the rehab facility.
By the time we got there he was so confused he had no idea what day it was, he thought it was morning, it was 7pm. He had essentially lost an entire day. He did not remember me being with him at the hospital for the entire day.
The next day my mother was down for the count again. Getting up and going to the rehab fac. the night before had been too much when she was still in migraine mood and she was down for the rest of the day. I left to take dad some more clothes and check on him. I met my brother there during dad's therapy and dad was feeling Much better. Joked with us and his therapists, sat up and visited with us for a few hours and was quite with it. The movement in his left side is fine, it came back and the numbness faded. They are not sure if it was a TIA or a complicated migraine.
Fast forward 3 days, dad is still in rehab, working on his left side to get some control and movement back. He is cranky as he does not want to be there, but who would. Mom started to recover from her first migraine, was up, moving around for 2 days when she was hit by a REALLY BAD ONE! I only have to take her into the hospital for migraines about 2 times a year, and last night was one of them. All she could do yesterday was cry and hold her head and pray. I told her she either had to come with me or I was calling an ambulance. She came with me. With a HUGE bucket to puke in. We made it sans puke. They gave her what is called a migraine cocktail. It contains 3 shots, an anti nausea, a steroid, and a pain medication. Takes the pain away stat and makes you sleep a lot. We were both exhausted by the time we got home and fell into bed. That is how things sit today. We will see how she feels today, see if she is up to visiting dad, I am still tired and still have the headache the stress of yesterday gave me.

It Wasn't Me.

So, from the very first fall at home until his last fall in rehab; my dad has fallen 5 times. He keeps forgetting that he can't stand up on his own, or simply tries to be too independent. After the last fall, they have taken some precautions such as lowering his bed so it is harder for him to get out of bed to begin with, not as far for him to fall, and bringing him out to watch tv by the nurse's station when he wants to sit in his wheel chair, so that he does not attempt to move himself from his chair to his bed again. Then if he does move the nurses are much closer to him.
The nurses and aids have been teasing him because word has gotten around that he has trouble staying in one spot. So yesterday he told them that his evil twin was the one that made him get up, and for Sunday his evil twin was gone, so he wasn't going to stand up THAT day:)

Status Update

We went to visit him last night and he had been to therapy earlier in the day, so he was exhausted from that. He was still unable to get up on his own and is not able to put any weight on his right leg. The strange thing is, is that he can feel it when you touch the right side of his body. He is not able to move his right arm at all but he can feel you touching him.
When he fell yesterday he cut his ear and his head. That really made an impression on him and I don't think he will forget that he can't stand up, at least not soon.
The therapy people have given us notice that they expect him to have to stay in rehab for 1-3 months. This is his longest stay yet. Even the first time he lost feeling in his leg he didn't stay that long.
His speech is a little slurred. It gets worse when he is tired, but after the first day in the hospital his face started to drop on the right side, and his words have been slower and more slurred.
I told him that if his ear was really mangled he could tell people he got in a bar fight and someone bit it off;)
Yesterday he was actually in better spirits than he has been since this new stroke happened. The first night in rehab, he sounded and looked really bad. Yesterday his spirits where higher, and he was happy because they replaced his old box tv with a new flat screen, so I spent a lot of the visit helping him learn how to use the new tv remote so he could watch his tv that night:)

As It Is Today.

When I first started this blog I thought I would maybe use it as a way to keep people up to date on how my dad was doing. Today, that is exactly how I am going to use it. On Tuesday morning my dad woke up and just like every morning he got up and took a shower. However, my mother noticed that he was very shaky and was having trouble with his balance. She told him that he should go back to bed to rest some more. When he tried to get up again about an hour later my mom told him that he was still to shaky to be walking around and tried to get him to sit down while she was holding onto the lapels of his robe, at this point my father turned to his weaker side and fell to the ground taking my mom with him as her hands were caught in his lapels. Now for those of you who don't know, my mother has 7 broken vertebrae in her back and is not supposed to bend over let alone be bent over to the ground by a 26o lb man. Luckily she was just stiff and sore from the ordeal and did not break anything.
My dad's right side had gone numb. He had no feeling in the entire right side of his body and I had to prop him up while my mom called the ambulance to come and bring him to the hospital for tests.
The ambulance and the police came within minutes. Apparently there was another 911 call at the same time in our building. It took them awhile but they got dad onto the stretcher, and took him away. We had yet to get dressed for the day.
By the time we made it to the ER dad's neurologist was in with him and had determined that he needed to be admitted. He had a MRI, and eco cardiogram, and many other tests. Thursday he was transferred from the hospital to the rehab facility. He is still bedridden, and keeps forgetting that he can't walk. He has fallen twice cutting his ear and his head because he thinks he can still walk, he simply forgets that his body no longer works the way it used to. That is where we sit today. I am about to go and visit him.

I Do Not Envy You This Task.

When my dad was in his early 2o's he attended Dunwoody Institute. At that time it was a school that you earned a two year degree as a mechanical technician (mechanic). My dad had never enjoyed school, and while his other siblings went on to four year colleges, my dad wanted to do something where he would be able to work with his hands, something were he would not be stuck behind a desk day after day.
While attending Dunwoody he met a fellow student by the name of Jim. They were of like ages and temperament, and became good friends. After graduation they decided it would be an adventure to move out west, I don't know how Jim handled letting his family know he was moving, but my dad waited until my Grandmother (his mother) left for work one morning, then he loaded up his car and left for Colorado. He called her later that night to tell her he was moving. He didn't want there to be any chance of being talked out of his decision:) Jim and Tom (my dad), moved into Colorado Springs with little to their name, no jobs, no place to live, and no friends or family even close let alone in the state. They both got mechanic jobs, shared an apartment, and had adventures that for some reason I have never been allowed to hear.
Eventually, my dad moved back to the cities long enough to meet my mother, then my parents promptly moved back to Colorado, they moved into Jim's apartment until they could find a place of their own, and my dad began to work for Jim at his shop (mechanic shop). There is not one story that my parents tell from this period of their lives that does not include or refer to Jim in some way. He was my father's best friend for a huge, and important part of his life. About 8 years ago I finally got to meet Jim when we took a family trip out to Colorado Springs and it was like the two of them had not been separated for 20+ years.
My mom and I have been thinking about Jim lately because the time has come to make the phone call to Jim, and tell him that my father is stricken with a disease that has wasted his mind. That while my dad might remember him, there are no precise memories of him for my dad to recall. This horrible chore of calling this long time friend falls on my mother's shoulders and I do not envy her this. However, if I were in Jim's shoes, and a good friend of mine from my past was ill, I would want to know...before I got a funeral announcement.