Continued Progress?

Mother was ready to get out of the house this morning; she woke up around 6.30am and must have caused me to wake up (I guess), I found her already dressed. I wanted to drive her out and get some breakfast, so quickly I shaved and got dressed (good thing I pressed those shirts!!).  We arrived to find Dad awake and sitting up in the bed. He looked surprised when we walked in and said, “Hey, how are you?” We responded and Mother started to ask him how his night went, if breakfast had arrived, etc…  His breakfast had not been delivered yet and Mother started commenting to him about being ready to eat. He said something like, “You eat it” and I told him that the food would be for him, that I’d already had something for breakfast (actually we’d not stopped; Mother wanted to go straight out).

In the meantime a nurse came in to administer some drugs, and a parade of other clinical personnel came to the room over the next couple hours, breakfast being one of the things to come in. The breakfast consisted of juice, milk, a waffle of some sort, yogurt, and some bacon. He did not want to eat but after some prodding and more talk about how expensive the food is to waste (he’s always been big on the proper use of money; I thought this might appeal to the older part of his personality) he finally did taste everything and ate most of it. He loves the Activia yogurt, so that was a sure thing and I learned today that he loves juice or sweets because it went fast.  Shortly after breakfast my sister-in-law arrived and stayed with us for a couple hours.

He's been sliding his leg off the side of the bed in an attempt to get off the bed (at least that’s what we thought he was doing). But after several attempts I realized it could not happen and quit worrying about it so. But we're concerned that his leg hanging off the bed would cause it to hurt and continued to encourage him to stop. Finally the nursing staff had put up with it enough and placed his feet on a cushion of some sort that had elevated sides that kept his feet in between the sides and on the bed. Thank goodness!!!!

Lunch came around noon and the eating adventure started again and went about as well as breakfast. Mother and I stayed the day and my brother and his family arrived around 5pm…  Dinner arrived about the same time and my brother and his wife worked with Dad to get the food inside him. He tried his, “I’m not hungry” and the "You eat it" again, but they did not go for it and got him to eat the food.  We had a lot of talk about him and encouraging him; Dad kept falling asleep (this had happened throughout the day). Due to this no real therapy took place, other than sitting him up in the bed and hand-eye coordination while trying to eat.

Mother and I stayed for another couple hours and then took off in search of food to take home to eat late in the night (we're eating now). My brother and his wife were there when we left. 

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