Today was our only child's birthday, son who is now 34! I emailed him this link and said it was a happy birthday video! It is a vid of Bob, and although it is something he is far from doing on his own, it is the beginning of him reaching the next level. He has worked so hard, and I feel very thankful. The night I put up our tree, was the night my sister called to say Mom was in the emegency room, so I shoved the top angel and tinsel back in the box and ran out. Don't know where they
Well, my mom's better(pacemaker installed), and back to torturing me again. I've always loved her, that's never been the problem, but she is soooo cruel. Anyway...
When I would go visit her at the rehab, I'd leave Bob with the phone, as he recently learned how to answer it. I called to check on him and got no answer, so had to go home. I had been there about 4 hours, but the clock in the room was malfunctioning and didn't realize it was time anyway. The second hand moved, and the
Last night it all hit the fan, just after I got into the chat room. I started getting phone calls and had to start getting Bob ready for an early bed, get the pets ready for the night, and tear out of here. My mom was supposed to get a pacemaker Thursday morning, but Tuesday night began to have such irratic episodes that she called 911. When I got there her blood pressure was 240/110. Then a few hours after getting nitro, we saw the top number say 157 and thought it was good, but looked
Well, some of you might remember that when Bob was in the big hospital, getting test after test, not one time, did anyone come to me and say, "we have the results of his latest test, and what we find is..." - Never. I didn't ever know more about what his MRIs & catscans had shown, then the original information that he had a blocked caratid artery and the stroke team was standing by to do emergency brain surgery on him, if I gave permission. His 'doctor' from that hospital, never had anyt
I will play a little catch up and tell what's been happening. As you may remember, we are super busy with many therapies, trying to get in as many as we can before the year is up, or we lose them (60 allowed a year). I also found out that if he received more than one therapy a day, it counted as the same one. I had been thinking that he only had the 60, and so I had to choose whether to use them for PT or Speech. Come to find out, he could have been having speech all along and it woul
So, a therapist was showing me how to do a heel stretch today, and I made the mistake of not just saying yes, but saying, "it's harder for me to do it like that, because (long explanation about how our bed and bedroom is laid out). To which his idea was to just shove this or that out of the way, which I explained that everything in the house is already shoved out of the way, and there was no place left to shove, as it would only block another thing we'd need later. He kept insisting why did
Today was Thanksgiving Day in the US, and I'd like to say how thankful I am that I didn't blow us all up! Today was the day I decided to awaken the sleeping Crackin (boiler). With tomorrow comes the highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s, it has to be cold enough to light it, because it requires a draft pipe to feed air to it so you don't aphixiate, and so it needs to be cold enough that the boiler runs hard enough that the draft is eaten up with the immense heat of it, or the draft will freeze yo
NOW FOR GOOD NEWS: There have been some positive things happen that has affected Bob greatly! Remember the chair lift we got, that I had hoped would start him into more action? Well, 3 things happened, that I think has had a great affect on him:
1. The blessed chair lift, which made it possible for him to get up and down at will, = freedom and more mobility creates more mobility
2. Getting to see son & fiancee, was an upper
3. Seeing everyone doing and working made him want to ge
Son & fiancee were here week before last. They did an enormous amount of clearing out, and drug things to our storage locker or here. Put sealer/stain block on the 2 bedroom walls in question, then painted them. I did the trim, still have some to go. I went everyday and worked there a couple of hours, but they were there for all day long, till evening - clearing, cleaning, putting up curtains, whatever. I could never have gotten all that done, not in another 2 years. There is still som
I promised better news today, so I'll keep my word. Hate to just blog when my head is spinning around like in the movie The Exorcist.
1. When I went to get the insurance papers looked over by the senior service lady who helps with paperwork, I was telling her how we were going to tell his doctor that he needed one of those lift chairs, so he could stand at will. That would make him stronger to where maybe he could start crippling around the house. The way it is, he has to wait for me
I had been trying to do a little at the house -painting, packing the car full and bringing it back and ditching the boxes in either the garage or study that we don't use (still highly visible). The antibiotics I've been taking for a MONTH for the abscessed tooth, only worked somewhat - worked better on tearing out my intestines than healing the abscess... so I'm back on 500 mg of penc, only this time 3x a day, for another 10 days.
Right after I went to the senior center and had them review
It's all hitting the fan here, and I'm struggling to do everything I need to do for us without going completely insane. I can't even blog, my brain is too full of the turmoil here, to the point of being in a stupor and unable to communicate it. But we are ok, it's just the circumstances of having your life thrown into the wind and trying to hold onto something for dear life.
Most probably a neurologist will want to take new mri/cat scans of hubby's brain. Since one of the insurances I'm looking at is high deductible, does any one know just what an MRI and a catscan cost, so I could figure out what 20% of that would be.
I'm going to do a little catch up on my blog so I can find the info again later. The on-going insurance drama is still up in the air, and it is on the message board.
This happened yesterday:
Something has just happened, I can't believe it - miracle. Out of the blue, I got a call from whirlpool on the water heater (last out here to check their product in May). He said I he heard I was having water heater problems. I explained how we had a water heater that softened both cold & hot wat
Well, onto the next dilema. Husband's work insurance finished on Sept 5. We have not received any offer for cobra or other insurance from them yet, so this leads us to a strange perdicament.
No one will accept you without insurance, even if they do say they will pay it backward. This brings up another interesting problem. Retirees leave there with their insurance ready to go the next day, but the disabled who actually need ongoing care RIGHT NOW, are left in a purgatory of types. If I tak
Well, my life has been a blur of trying to get insurance and such going. Phone calls from hell, that eat the whole day. I was telling the girl that called to tell me the LTD had been approved that we had taken his pension early, at a lower amount, just so we could afford to pay our retired/disabled insurance rates. To which she informed me that I needed to send her a copy of that, because our LTD would be diminished by that amount. So... we took our pension early, at a lower rate, just
MON SEPT 4, 2012
I have done the 'mirror' shoulder shrugs with Bob for months, boosting the stroke shoulder while he shrugged the other one. Today after the PT did major pulling and stretching on his tight shoulder muscles and had him shrug, the stroke one actually moved upward a little bit! Now I don't know if it's because he is getting a little more back on that side or if the reason it didn't shrug before was that it was frozen and she had broken it lose! At any rate, WOO HOO! another sma
Yesterday was a bad day, I hurt all over, had slept for 3 nights, and both feet were swollen up and tingling from bad diet choices. Today was much better. I picked up the sticks (always a chore after a rain here) in the front and mowed. Went to Walmart shopping (Bob is ok alone, I either go when he naps or leave him watching something he likes. He enjoys being alone a while and I always wear a neck thing with emergency instructions that he heeds assistance if something happens to me.
Today I, once again, asked him to try to move his finger/s. Nothing. I slipped my index finger into his hand and asked him to try to squeeze it. He worked with all his arm, AND.... he put pressure on my finger! This is not the reflex that closes it tightly when he doesn't do it, this was really him doing it, and he's managed a few more times today! He can't open it yet, but this is the very beginning, getting the muscles to do anything at all in his hand!
I'm cutting and pasting this from the end of a previous post, where it is likely not seen. Gotta stop doing that. Then new news after the paper:
Another thing we have recently started, tracking our food. For years, we have written down what we ate each day, and have actually counted weight watcher points. I got him a little notebook and I have a new one too, as my previous one became the emergency stroke book, when it all hit the fan. Anyway, so everyday we write down what we ate, and so
I've not been able to write for so long, because of us killing ourselves going to therapy, so I'll have to try & catch up little by little.
WED 8-1-12
Today I worked with Bob on trying to organize his thoughts into sentences. I would give him 3 words to make a sentence from. At the top of the page, you see where he wrote the 3 words and a very strange sentence. Then I wrote in the spaces that were underlined, with the part of the sentence under each space, and he had to put in the right
Sometime last month, our inhome therapy came to an end. I called an outpatient place and told them everything about my husband's condition and they said, sure they could treat him. So, I made an appt to go in for a tour and he was with me in his wheelchair. All was just great, so I made an appt for our eval. When we went in, she asked what we wanted to get out of it and I said, 'well, the estim worked great in bringing his leg back, so I'd like to start that on his arm/hand, and he needs
This came up in another post, and originally I put it there, but figure it might not get seen there after people already looked at that post, so am transferring it here. It concerns journaling and his aphasia.
I wish he could journal. I have him write a little each day, but even he doesn't know what it means when he gets done. He knows while he is writing, I think, but when he gets done and looks at it, he says this is all jibberish. There are litterally, not 2 words together that make sen
Today when I got Bob up, sitting on the side of the bed, he said, "I'm Bob". I looked at him, and he said it again. He kept saying, "I'm Bob, I'm Bob, I'm Bob", maybe 20 times. I told him I knew he was Bob, and looked at him to see what that would bring. He said, "But am I the same Bob... or another Bob?" When someone is here and I say something funny, do they laugh because it was funny, or because I said something they couldn't understand? Do they see me as the Bob from before, or some
Oh man, I was at Walmart, and the speaker started playing that country song, something like 'you're still the one I run to, the only one I belong to, you're still the one I long to kiss' - and I started bawling like a baby and had to run to the back wall, so no one would see me.. fortunately I was close to it already. Then I had to start trying to stifle it, knowing I couldn't come home with a red face & eyes. He'll go to bed in an hour, and I can cry my heart out, without him knowing...
