free bird!!

Dad found out today that he is coming home Tuesday or Wednesday of next week – YAY!!!!!!!!!

He has a field trip tomorrow to a restaurant. He called my mom and said, “I need some nice pants, a nice shirt and $10 for my field trip tomorrow.” Too funny! You never think you’ll hear your dad telling your mom about a field trip he needs money for. It would only be better if he needed a permission slip signed, too.

He is also coming home for a visit on Sunday. It will be the first time he’s been home in 6 weeks. I’m not sure how they plan on convincing him to go back to the rehab hospital!

Anyway, in other good news, our friends Mike & Amanda welcomed their second child, a beautiful baby girl, into the world yesterday at 1:46 pm. Welcome, Ruth Marie Joy! She is absolutely adorable and perfect. Such happiness!

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they tried to make me go rehab, i said …

no, no, no!

Dad is back in rehab, despite his best efforts to negotiate his way home instead. He said all of the doctors and nurses greeted him at the elevator as though he was coming home and that it was very nice of them. I asked him if he’d seen Rita yet (the 80 yr old nun who taught math for 40 yrs that is also his rehab partner – and Dad thinks she’s going to kill him in his sleep) and he said that he hadn’t seen her, but was sure she’d come looking for him in the night.

I’m glad he’s safe in rehab.

Anyway, maybe Dad will be home next week. That would be nice, although, Dad does tend to be more impulsive now and we have to watch him like a hawk. Apparently he thinks he can just “get up and walk.” I put that in quotes because the truth is, he needs assistance and a brace. Even then, he struggles to support his left upper body and slumps over. Anyway, praise God that Dad is alive and that he’s going to be ok. HUGE praises, actually.

Also, speaking of happiness, I got my hair cut tonight. The appointment was supposed to be 2 hours, but it took the guy 3 hours. I know what you’re thinking: wow, Emily, your hair must’ve been in saaaaad shape, hey? (that was for all my Canadian readers). I just like to think that young David, my snappy hair dresser, took extra special care with my hair.

Actually, I think it took him a long time to put the foils in and then I think he forgot about me because I actually finished reading my Real Simple magazine and was starting on Domino before he came back. I read fast, but not that fast!

On another note, Real Simple stresses me out. The magazine about simplifying my life weighs 10 lbs and is crammed full of ads. Not that I mind the ads, but the mag doesn’t make me feel zen-like after reading it. I was pretty proud of my working out lately, but after reading RS, I felt like a failure. In order to lose weight I need to run for 1 hour (not the 30-45 minutes I was doing) for most days (not 3-4). Darn it!! There is no winning here – none!

I think I want some more ice cream.

Speaking of ice cream, we have a new Youth Pastor candidate coming in tomorrow. He is stopping by for a dessert tomorrow night, so I made my Louisianna Bread pudding and a chocolate cake. Hopefully the fact that the Bread Pudding comes with bourbon cream sauce won’t get me in too much trouble.

They tried to make me go to rehab… I said, “No, no, no!”

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more dad updates

I just came back from the hospital from seeing Dad. He has improved GREATLY from where he was last night.

For those of you who don’t know, Dad had a pain in his abdomen since Wednesday. Finally, on Friday, they figured out that it wasn’t a pulled muscle like they assumed – it was actually pulmonary embolisms. Pulmonary embolisms (I didn’t know what those were until I looked it up on WebMD.com) are blood clots in the lungs. Large clots can kill patients instantaneously, while smaller clots are survivable. Dad’s pain level reached an 8 or 9 (10 being the worst pain he’s ever felt in his life), before they were able to do anything to help him out.

The good news is, the doctors did a brain CT scan and discovered that the brain swelling has gone down since his last CT and the bleeding in his brain stopped. This allowed the doctors to give Dad some blood thinners and install a filter in his vein to “catch” loose clots. As of this afternoon, Dad did not have a headache (for the first time in 3 weeks) and his abdomen doesn’t hurt. They took him out of Critical Care this afternoon and put him in a private room (sure beats rooming with EColi guy… yuck!). When I left, Dad was asleep in bed and Mom was asleep in the chair next to the bed with the Cubs game playing softly in the background. Dad’s mom, Grandma R, would have been proud. 🙂

Anyway, thanks again for everyone who continues to pray for Dad and our family. They mean a lot and make a difference!

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things dad says

Dad has said some doozies since he’s been in the hospital that have kept us laughing. Just to share a few…

Dad: See that bottle over there?
Emily: Yes Dad?
Dad: I have to pee into that. If I don’t, they are going to catheterize me.
Frank: We don’t want that!
Dad: No, we don’t. And they want to give me a tylenol suppository, can you believe that? This is like a bad prison movie!

later, after Frank and I came back from getting breakfast…

Dad (opening one eye): While you were gone…. they catheterized me!!!

Dad (in the middle of physical therapy, talking to Uncle Steve): I can stand better than you can golf!

The hospital where he was at played a lullaby throughout all of the rooms, each time a baby was born. During a 15 minute telephone conversation, the song played 5 times.
Dad: Holy crap, they’re spraying babies out into the parking lot! Oh no, there is one on my bed and he’s smoking a cigar. He looks like Papa!

Dad: Caitlin, can you please move me back to the other room?
Caitlin: Dad, the other room is in ICU. I can’t take you back there.
Dad: I’d do it for you.
Caitlin: I’m sorry, but I can’t move you.
Dad: Paunchy, my pillow, would do it for me if he could. But he can’t.
Paunchy the Pillow: I’d do it for you Rick.
Dad: See.
Paunchy the Pillow: Oh no, I just had a stroke!
Dad: Paunchy just had a stroke in his right feather.

Mom: Rick, how are you doing this morning?
Dad: I still have a headache.
Mom: Ok, can you do me a favor? Can you hit the call button and have the nurses give you a vicodin?
Dad: My head still hurts.
Mom: I know, Rick. Please, hit the call button and have the nurses give you some vicodin. I will call you back in 30 minutes.
30 minutes later, Mom calls back, but the room is busy. She calls the nurses’ station.
Mom: Hi, my husband’s phone is busy. Can you check to see that it isn’t off the hook?
Nurse: One moment. (brief pause) Ok, it looks like he requested all incoming calls to be blocked. He told the operator that you requested it.
Mom: Oh, for Pete’s sake, I told him to hit the call button!
Later, once Mom got a hold of Dad.
Mom: Richard, I asked you to call the nurses, why did you have your calls blocked?
Dad (Irritated): You told me TWICE to block the calls.
Mom: I told you TWICE to hit the call button!!
Dad: Oh.
Mom: Did you get the vicodin?
Dad: Yeah.
Mom: Ok. Good.

Dad: Where is Mom?
Emily: She’s showering. She’ll be on her way.
Dad: It’s always something with her.

Dad (Pointing his index finger that has a pulse monitor on it): ET phone home.

Dad (Anytime someone came into his room): Rick. June. 52. (The nurses always asked him his name, the month and his age)

Dad: I told them I wanted to do my rehab outpatient.
Emily: You did what??
Dad: I need to get out of here. I told them I could do my therapy outpatient. She fed me some crap about this being the gold standard in hospital care. She’s a (expletive, expletive).
Emily: Oh.

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woops

On Saturday morning, I decided that I would go for a nice, long jog. It always clears my head and helps me think. At mile one, I took a dive and scraped up my knees and hand. Niiice. Way to go, Em.

I went home Saturday night and hung out with Frank. It was nice to have some FK and EK time. Sunday we went to church and then went down to the lake to spend the day relaxing. This morning, Frank and I had breakfast and I came back down to P-Town to see Dad and help out around the house.

Dad had a terrible headache today, likely the result of brain swelling due to the substantial stroke he suffered. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain he’s ever felt, he was at a 9. After hounding the nurses several times, he was finally given 2 tylenol. After that didn’t take the edge off, they came back with 2 vicoden. They also took him over to the ER for a CT scan. My poor dad!!! First they had to move him from his bed onto the stretcher. Two women moving a 200 lb 6’3″ man off of a bed and onto a stretcher does not go smoothly! Then they jostled him down to the elevator, onto a van and across the street, where the jostled him onto a CT scan bed and then back on to the stretcher for the return ride. Poor guy had a terrible headache and then was bumped around for almost an hour!!! Fortunately the vicoden (vicodin?) finally started to work. Phew!!

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