12/26

Merry belated Christmas!  I missed making a blog entry yesterday due to being so busy but we had a great holiday.  We visited Dad in the morning, opened gifts and had breakfast.  All year his number one Christmas wish has been for the Harry Potter box set of DVDs, he remembered that yesterday and gave a big smile when he opened them.  I'm thinking of finding a DVD player to bring in so that he can watch them in the evening.  The kids also made him a couple of handmade and hand painted wooden gifts.  When we gave him a little wooden chest that the kids painted, Zoey said "This is for Pop Pop so that he can feel better!".  So cute!!  I visited him again in the evening, he actually had several visitors which was really nice.  I was worried that he may feel a bit isolated over the holiday, but there was so much family representation, it was great.  I took a few pictures, I'll try to put them up tomorrow.

Overall he's really doing well.  Until this point he's really resisted getting out of bed much at all except for the therapy sessions, I think because he's just so tired.  But I've been doing a lot of encouragement and a lot of talking to him and I saw a difference today.  He got up and brushed teeth in the bathroom instead of in the bed AND... he shaved today!  Twice!  You may not know this but I've been pestering my dad on a daily basis to shave and clean up his beard.  I know he's tired, but I think looking scruffy just encourages you to lay in bed more, whereas feeling all clean & pretty (or handsome in his case!) gives you more motivation to get up and do things.  So either because he's feeling better or getting tired of my nagging, he said out of the blue "I think I'll shave today".  He walked in the bathroom and did it all himself, and much to my relief didn't cut his face off or require an ER visit.  The guy has been in bed for three weeks, I had no idea how good his aim would be with a sharp razor.  Thankfully he did fine. 

The only thing is that he's coming around enough to start to feel really irritated by being cooped up there.  He's a very independent person so it goes against his grain to follow someone else's rigid schedule.  He gets impatient with the fact that they have a bed alarm on him when he's in bed, it starts screeching when he gets out of bed alone.  (Because he's still a bit unsteady on his feet, they just don't want him walking anywhere without staff keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn't fall).   He very much wants to get back to his own schedule and I can tell he's irritated by feeling like he's being "babysat".  But honestly that's a great sign.  It's probably frustrating for the rehab staff (especially when he pulled out his PICC line, again, because it was beeping for too long and he was tired of it) but it shows that he's making progress by becoming aware of his surroundings and yearning for his own routine and pace.  And he's much more aware than people realize.  I think sometimes people might assume that because he's quiet and lays in bed so much that he may not be processing everything, but he really is taking in a great deal.  Sure, a lot of times when he's quiet and in bed with his eyes closed, he's sleeping.  But many times he's thinking.  He'll be laying there and then suddenly say "what's the name of the river that runs through Harrisburg?".  Last night at 2am he rang the call bell and asked the nurse "what's the name of the German car that begins with an "s"?  She probably thought that was a really bizarre thing to do at 2am.  I personally think that it's awesome.  I have no doubt that he was laying there, thinking and processing, putting his brain to work.  So woohoo for progress and for him thinking of German cars at 2am!