real food, real clothes

Dad's been having pain walking for awhile (a long while, on the scale of years). He's progressed from sitting often, to using a cane, to using a walker, to the hospital on Wednesday, October 26, 2016 with a blood clot. He was kept a few days on IV blood thinners, then sent home on oral blood thinners a few days later. A week later, Saturday, November 5, he was unable to sit up or walk and was ambulanced to the hospital where he was kept in observation 2 1/2 days, then sent home once again. A week later (noticing a theme?) on Saturday, November 12, he was at a pain-level-10 meltdown stage and was again ambulanced to the hospital where they discovered incredibly elevated white blood counts due to an enlarged gallbladder. It is supposed to be the size of a small pear; dad's was a bad cantaloupe. Fortunately on Monday the 14th they were able to insert a drain rather than remove it (too big to remove laparoscopically, too many other risk factors to make surgery a viable option.

Big Frog and I were able to come up on Monday the 14th and see him after the drain was inserted. So we missed altogether the scariest part of the experience and got instead the PT end of things. I plan to be in town thru Thanksgiving weekend; Big Frog returned home and will be back up for Thanksgiving weekend.

This was an email that went out to the family on Sat 11/19.

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Dad is accepting some "pushing" from me (and edible rewards) and is overcoming some of the fear of failure/fear of pain issues. He also REALLY loves his surgeon, Dr Scott Rehrig.

So today he got out of bed and into a chair for the first time since Sat admittance.


He also went onto diabetic menu at the hospital, up from liquids, and although the hospital meatloaf looked surprisingly inspiring and smelled great, it was very salty. Hospital food, gotta love it.


An unexpected visit from Dr Scott and dad asked if he could try walking (he has not done anything but transfer with the PTs). With Dr Scott guiding & spotting, UP dad got & walked (with walker) around the room, with less pain than he expected and less pain than he experienced two weeks ago when he was released to home.


Dr Scott commented on virtually untouched plate and dad said I'd mentioned sushi. I'd intended to try to sneak it in, but Dr Scott said to get some real food, home food, whatever would spark appetite.

Thanks to the power of FB, I got eight sushi recommendations from friends even before going to Yelp. One was within walking distance and it's a glorious day out. Sushi!


I asked mom to bring in some real clothes when she came in this afternoon. So after he took a brief hallway jaunt (75 feet roundtrip), (1st time out of his hospital room this stay) mom came in bearing actual tees and sweatpants.


It's a good day.

Goal is to move on Monday to the rehab center Lorien, right here in Columbia MD.

In the midst of all this, mom largely took the day "away" (from the hospital) to catch up on life details. She's super stressed. And the things she needs done aren't delegate-able, and the things that she can delegate are things that are therapeutic for her to do herself. Home reno goes apace. Pray for mom to have peace and to plainly feel God's presence.

Thank you for praying -- we can feel it -- keep it up! There still are big issues, inc blood clot, herniated discs, ongoing back pain... but things are a world better than they were last week.

Hug your loved ones.