Good PT session today, Dad had a lot of really engaged participation. Mostly they worked on balance exercises. His large muscle groups seem to be strengthening nicely, but he still has trouble with fine motor control and coordination. The therapist praised all his weight lifting and leg exercises, but then set up an obstacle course for him to walk through and after he inadvertently sent the cones flying she compared him to "a bull in a china shop". I tried to explain to her that he's always had those tendencies, ha!
After PT he actually suggested that we go shopping so that he could buy Zoey's birthday present. Until now I had been putting off taking him out because I didn't know if he was quite up to that challenge. A "simple" trip like that is incredibly taxing on the healing brain - all of the lights, sounds, people, walking/physical effort, and just visual overload from all the stuff on the shelves. And Dad is definitely not the world's biggest shopping enthusiast so I had been debating when to give that a whirl, but this was a great opportunity. We went to AC Moore and lasted about 5-10 minutes before turning around and leaving. I told him that is a huge accomplishment, seeing as how he probably wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes in there before his brain infection. Have you been in that place? It's like an explosion of kitschy crafty mayhem that smells like a geriatric potpourri dish. I personally love it and could spend hours in there indulging all of my creativities, but wow talk about overstimulating the brain.
Yesterday was much more relaxing, I picked him up and brought him over to our place for a couple of hours. We sat in rocking chairs by the fire, watched the kids play, I drank coffee while Marty and my dad sipped on glasses of whiskey. Dad informed me "this is the best medicine I've had yet".
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