He's home!

My dad's home! More later.

YAY!

It posted! Even tho I had to re-enter all my paragraph lines...

Ok, I now understand why C writes her blog in a word processor and then uploads it. BLOGGER ATE MY ENTRY YESTERDAY DAMMIT! And I was so annoyed I said screw it and left it.

So today! I am writing in my crappy copy of Works (cause I’m too cheap to buy Word and it was free with the comp) and gonna try to upload it like the wise and wonderful C.

So, dad’s in a holding pattern. He is progressively improving, slowly, but improving. From talking to mom last night they’re going to start him on the blood thinner pills and wean him off the heparin so he can go home to wait for his cardiac procedure to close the hole in his heart (May 15ish for pete’s sake!) I suppose he would be more comfortable at home, but my mom and I are both a bit paranoid about his breathing. I want his oxygen levels over 95% without supplemented oxygen. Monday morning’s numbers weren’t that great (92%) I think with no oxygen overnight, so maybe by the time the thinners are stabilized so will his oxygen intake.

I’m on leave from work for a few days… I’ve been having these bouts of vertigo for the past 2 weeks with numbness in my tongue and lips so went to the doc on Friday and he ran the gamut of neuro tests and had a bunch of bloodwork done. Will keep you all posted. I have an idea of what it might have been caused by, but want to talk to the doc first so you all get to wait to hear about my stupidity.

C started soccer practice last night. Man the kid is exhausted this morning. They practiced for 1.5 hrs which is a lot for a bunch of 8-9 year olds their first evening out. No major injuries, just sore muscles.

I’ve packed a few boxes for moving, trying to get started on that. Mostly just repacking properly the stuff we tossed in the garage to “show” the house. With that, I did hear from my agent yesterday, things look positive about moving the possession date of the new place up a day or 2. We should have a better idea in 2 weeks.

Got the car in to get the brakes, muffler and tires done. Ow. But money well spent, the little garage near here did a good job, and I felt comfortable dealing with them. The car should be good for the next couple of years, just needs an oil change.

I’m trying to find out if I can put some sort of appointment calendar or something on my blog, see the gals get together for “Ya Ya nights/afternoons” where we chat about everything and nothing and generally blow off steam and get support from friends. But ladies! We need to schedule this more often! So yeah, I’m looking for one, if any lurker out there knows of one, drop me a comment would’ya?

Ok off to call bathtub repair places (our bathtub is peeling!) and then for some WOW before I head up to the hospital for lunch with dad.

Holding pattern and time off

So we sit... and wait until the ortho doc comes in today. Well my mom and dad sit and wait, I'm here at home on my own doctor prescribed stress leave for a few days. Although I have to say the vertigo episodes seem to be lessening (cross your fingers that I haven't just jinxed myself) so I hope I can get back on my motorbike... I'm going through withdrawl.

So on my stress leave today :) I have scheduled:
Drop kidlet off at dayhome
Take car in for estimate on brakes
Avoid heart attack when hearing price for brake repair (just speculating)
Laundry
Packing
Dishes
Beg hubby to pay for brake repair
NAP?
Pick up car
Wait for kidlet to walk home from school (I gave him 25 mins before I start walking to meet him)
Maybe in there play some World of Warcrack

Apparently I have a hard time relaxing... go figure... I'll try not to do too much... but I hate just sitting around.

Kidlet's soccer practices/games start tonight, yikes. These poor kids, they're talking 6-8pm. When are they supposed to do homework? and sleep? Ours gets ready for bed at 8pm and it's still hard to get him up at 7am the next day.

So looks like I'll need to have supper added to my list so when they get home they can eat while I go take care of the mom's dogs (which I have been doing nightly while dad is in hospital)

Oop, dryer's done (thank goodness it doesn't buzz) :) I'm off to flip laundry, and then maybe a bit of WOW... yes that's it... WOW then take the car in

Where'd the week go?

On the dad front:

He still wants to go home. I don't blame him. But mess ups abound. Apparently no one spoke to the cardiologist about this procedure until Tuesday . So finally they all get together just in time for my dad's ortho surgeon to go to a conference for the weekend. And apparently no one wants to do anything until he gets back. That's another week wasted. The cardiac guy is now talking mid May for this procedure? WTF? It's a 1 hr procedure, what's the issue. I'm frustrated that I'm just hearing this from my mom, but I know I can't sit in his hospital room to wait for updates myself. Damn control freak tendencies sometimes...

So here he sits, on heparin and saline, eating diced food (better than minced!) on his way to real food. Walking a bit with the help of a cane, as he's still pretty weak, but that reminds me! What the hell are the physio people doing working on how well he can walk? His legs aren't broke, it's his damn shoulder that's been replaced, geeze people grab a brain! His speach improves daily, I have every expectation that he will have full recovery, and perhaps if they every get this damn procedure done, we may prevent any more strokes from occuring.

On the house front:

Waiting to see if we can get a couple days ealier posession on our new place. Just enough so that we can move everything out of the old place and I can clean it decently. Granted why is it when you sell something it all of a sudden starts to fall apart? Here's a wierd one... our bathtub is peeling, yes peeling. Apparently the previous owner had it coated with something, and now it is peeling off the base of the tub. Grrrr, have to make a trip to home depot to figure out if it's a do-it-yourself or call someone in.

On the car front:

I think I need new brakes. My car is making a very annoying squeek for awhile now. Hubby hasn't been too helpful in taking it in for me, so I made an appointment with the little garage across the street to get an estimate on Monday. I really hope it won't be too expensive.

On the me front:

So with all the stress and chaos of the dad situation, I really haven't had too much time for myself. I went to the doc yesterday since I've had 2 weeks of "vertigo" now. Where every once in awhile it will feel like the world takes some time to catch up to my brain. Also a week ago, the tip of my tongue and my lips started getting tingly. Like I burned them on soup, but I know I haven't. So doc ran the neuro gamut and took some blood and gave me some time off. Maybe it's stress, maybe it's something more, we'll see. He told me to rest and come back Wed to see what the lab results pop up.

It's a new week

I took 2 days off from going to the hospital to give myself a bit of a break. As hard as it was, and even tho I still feel guilty about doing it, I did get some rest.

I went for coffee this morning with my dad, he seems to have really jumped ahead since Saturday. He was able to sit up and have coffee with me, even though when I was done, he was more than ready for a nap since a Physio guy showed up at the same time to work on his shoulder.

I went back at lunch and dad was up in his wheelchair eating lunch by the window. He was even able to walk using his IV pole to stabelize him back to his bed after lunch. But again, poof, out for a nap. I know how he feels I did the same all weekend.

Physio people were supposed to return at 10:30-11ish but apparently they didn't show according to mom, so who knows when they will appear.

Also, another messup.. I can't believe this place. My dad has a hole in his heart that needs to be corrected. You'd think they might get on that eh? No. The main cardiologist guy was not informed I found out today. So we've wasted 4 days when my dad may have been able to have this done cause someone didn't tell their boss. FRUSTRATING! But I'm thankful to the stubborn doc yet again, cause she notified the proper people. Hopefully now someone will act on it.

Dad's been making noises since Sunday that he wants to go home. It's good incentive since he's been actually doing his speach therapy and trying to move around more. His speach is leaps and bounds better, most often we can understand him on the first try unless he's getting tired.

I'm having trouble getting motivated to pack for the move. It must be all the stress all at once because normally I would have the house half packed by now. Hopefully things will settle down and I can get more enthused. I'm excited for sure! Just overwhelmed I think.

Happy Easter

Well, since I haven't been up to the hospital yet. I'll put up a happy picture of my puppdog. He doesn't realize he's almost 8 years old.

Update

Well lets see, where are we.

Thursday afternoon/evening a social worker appeared to chat with my mom. It's about time someone came around to see what's happening. The biggest grief that my mom could come up with of course at the time was the diet they were feeding my dad. I'd accosted a nurse earlier in the day to ask if he could have some fruit or something more palatable than the sludge they were giving him. And for once, the hospital actually acted on it. Since Thursday he's been getting more normal food, just with lots of sauce (3 times the sauce) to make things soft and slippery. It's nice to see more than just the dairy food group on his tray.

Also Thursday afternoon they came back with the results of the transesophogeal echo (?), where they look at your heart by going down your throat to do it. And omg they finally found something. One of the many docs suspected that there might be a small hole in my dad's heart which was why the clots were running around outside of the normal flow. And in November with the first stroke they never did find anything. But they never looked that deep aparently. So, she runs this big test and pop! there it is! While having a hole in your heart isn't the best thing to hear, it's better than another I don't know.

So, now he needs that fixed too. A whole herd of cardiologists appeared Thursday to explain the procedure. Apparently they put a little "umbrella" in his heart to block the hole. It's done totally through veins so they don't have to crack his chest open. I'll have to look more into this procedure.

And he got a not bad smelling meatloaf, corn and potatoes for dinner.

Friday

Didn't go in as early, trying to let my mom get into a routine, since this is going to be a long haul and I do have to get back to working normally. Still frustrated with the hospital staff, there's just not enough of them to be able to commit to any time to do certain things like getting my dad out of bed, which still takes at least 2 people.

So I got in, and we had the physio lady working on his shoulder, and then they offered to get him into the wheelchair so we could take him for a wander. Apparently they gave him a gross lunch (soggy grilled cheese) but he did eat all his soup. Anyways, we got him into the chair and took him for a stroll down the hall, out of the ward, through some sunshine, and sat at one of the lounge areas outside of his ward. I think he was relieved to be up and about, but after about half an hour he was ready to go back to bed.

He had a number of visitors yesterday, so I'm sure he was totally pooped by dinnertime. He got ham and peas and I think potatoes again, and CHOCOLATE CAKE! He said the peas were gross but ate the ham, and his cake :) It took him two go rounds to finish the cake, but he did.

The speech pathologist has left us a list of words to work on, but right now with every meal/activity causing him to need a nap, we haven't done too much with them yet.

Oh, and also! He swallowed pills yesterday. He had 2 T3's after his afternoon jaunt.

So, things are progressing slowly but steadily. We're not sure when the cardio fixit is happening yet, either next week or the week after.

Back deck

A modicum of good news?

I'm lucky to know what day I'm on anymore. But today I think hopefully started out well. My mom and I got off the elevator on my dad's floor of the hospital to see him walking towards us. Yeah he's got physio equipment everywhere, but he's walking towards us. I get teary just thinking about it.

They've still got him on crap food, porridge, pudding, yogurt etc. We brought him some fruit cocktail from home and he was able to eat the peaches... everything else was still a bit too hard to chew.

He also got into a private room last night so he at least has a window to stare out of, and possibly a tv. Not that he cares much, but it's got to be better than staring at the clock.

They've dropped his oxygen again, and he's managing to stay relatively stable between 92-95 (whatever your saturated o2 measurement units are). Even dropping from 6 to 5 is progress.

I still wish he could be going home soon, but I know even tho the staff for the most part sucks at the hospital, he's where he needs to be. Curious as to what will happen when they transfer him to the Glenrose for rehab.

Checked out the new school for the step-son last night. Wow, St. Albert has money in their school system! Amazing. I'm excited for him, even tho everything else is kind of squishing that excitement into my feet. I'm excited about the house too, but can't motivate myself to do much more than collapse into sleep when I get home right now.

Our House!

It is a 4 level split with ~2000 sq feet of living space (woot!). 3 bedrooms, 3 full bathrooms. Master bedroom has a 3 piece ensuite (yay!). Over sized 2 car garage with enough room out front to pretty much turn the bikes around to ride down the driveway forwards rather than having to back down the driveway. Gas fireplace, wet bar, lovely deck out back.

Life sucks and then?

So, since I'm not functioning in any sort of thinking capacity I thought I'd update the 2 people who read my blog ;)

Let's see, where did I leave off. Yes, my dad was recovering nicely from his shoulder surgery. Then the sky fell in.

I came back from visiting him Friday at lunch to get back to work. Work work work. Then at 3:30 I get a call from the pain management nurse. He's had another stroke. Now, my dad had a stroke back in November that brought the world crashing down on us all, but he did recover 100% from that one. Needless to say I packed up and pretty much ran from the lab to the hospital.

Now, background on this one. We don't know what might have caused this one, but there was a major fuckup post surgery for my dad. The surgeon's "assistant" ?forgot? to write up post-op instructions which is why my dad didn't get painkillers till the next day. Well apparently also in these not written post-op instructions was supposed to be instructions for him to get heparin since he'd had the one stroke in november. We still haven't decided what to do on that note with the hospital. No one's focused enough to threaten a lawsuit yet.

So anyways. It's Friday evening, my dad can no longer talk/swallow. Thank goodness he still has mobility in his limbs, this stroke seemed to be restricted to just facial nerves. We're raking the surgeon over the coals as to what was supposed to have been done post surgery and why there were no instructions written.

I don't remember too much of Friday to be honest. My world was crashing down around me and I couldn't do anything about it.

Saturday, back to the hospital (I've taken the car away from my mom and have been driving back and forth a number of times in a day). Tests tests and more tests. Chest x-rays to make sure he's not aspirated any liquids. He's not allowed anything by mouth. He's frantic, we're frantic. And then his breathing gets strained. I don't even know if this was saturday or sunday at this point. Doc comes in later and says that my dad has pulmonary embolisms in his lungs. In simple terms, he has blood clots in his lungs which are cutting off his air. So now I'm watching my dad struggle to breathe and I'm scared to death. I know it's not good. Thankfully they finally get a heparin drip going after much debate with the neurology asshole who didn't want to give him heparin, and the ortho doc (covering his ass) wanting to. So finally the ortho doc just did it. And I'm glad he did.

They hooked him up to the heparin drip and also transferred him out of the ortho ward and into the trauma ward where he got to be monitored 24/7. Much better. They were monitoring his oxygen intake and blood pressure etc. No one has anything comforting to say. Just monitoring. Hour to hour. More tests will be booked monday.

On top of all this, we have a house to look at Saturday afternoon. It's the last thing in the world I want to do, but need to do something. The house is nice, really nice, we want to write an offer. So we go to write an offer and find out we're competing (not surprised). The offers won't be presented until Sunday morning. Back to the hospital.

Sunday morning, back to the hospital. Checking phone messages on the house. Finally some good news. We have a house! Will post pics soon.

Back to the hospital. Trying to contact my sisters in amongst all this. Both are not in town. They're frantic. Trying to keep everyone updated. Getting really tired.

Monday, they take some of the monitoring stuff off. That's got to be good right? I leave my mom at the hospital and try to work. Back to the hospital later, check on him. He's hanging in there. They've turned down his oxygen and given him a nasal canulla instead. The speach pathologist has come in to give him a swallowing assessment. He can start to have some fluids. I think it's probably the best cream of carrot soup he's ever had. Supposed to be a busy day, but they only take him off for one test. Well hopefully more Tuesday.

I'm getting tired of updating people. I know they want to know, but I'm tired of talking about it. Back to the hospital Tuesday morning, they've kidnapped him for some tests, finally. So he gets a bunch done including a wierd "bubble echo" where they inject saline into him to check his heart. It's quite uncomfortable for him in his chest so they give him nitro which knocks him out so bad he can't eat.

Oh and we got our approval on our mortgage, yay!

So now we come to today (Wednesday). Hospital this morning, they've kidnapped him yet again for an x-ray of his shoulder (the least of our worries at the moment). And they're talking about transferring him to the Glenrose for specific therapy for the shoulder and the stroke. He's starting to seem more like himself. His speach is becoming easier to understand and he can take larger drinks, still through a straw, but it's progress.

Now the concern is why the clots got to where they are. The current hypothesis is that he has a small hole in his heart that's allowing them to get where they shouldn't be. So more testing. They want to stop the heparin drip and put him on a pill blood thinner. So I'm guessing we are making progress. I have to look at it that way. Just going over the past few days to write it down has brought tears to my eyes again.

Tonight, I won't be at the hospital. With buying this house, we are looking at the school that my step-son will most likely be attending. Convieniently the open house is tonight at the school. I'm nervous to leave my dad, but I really need to get to bed before midnight-2am.

Now to see if I can figure out how to put up house pics.

TG

Well things just don't slow down do they? My dad went in for shoulder replacement surgery yesterday. He's doing fine, but the hospital is doing the standard left hand not talking to the right hand and he was almost without any pain killers yesterday. Thank goodness the pain relief nurse came in while I was there for coffee this morning and he is hopefully going to be set up with a self-administering pump for morphine today. There's nothing to bring you down to earth faster than seeing your parent in a hospital bed. I've seen that too often in the past 6 months already.

On the house front. Wednesday night we went out to look at somewhere between 6-8 houses. They're kind of a blur to be honest. The only one that really stood out was in a very poor location so we passed on it. The other notables were:

1. The cat pee house! Listed by our old realator (scary) and we got no further than the front door before the smell bowled us over and we left before even taking off our shoes.
2. The house that was never cleaned. Other than the closet of a kitchen, that was the worst part of the house, these people didn't know what soap and water were for. White doors should not be grey with handprints when you're trying to sell a house.
3. The stinky curry house with way too many people living there. Again, would have been a beautiful house, but they had at least 2 families if not more crammed in there, and the curry smell just bowled us over.
4. The little bungalow in St. Albert. This one was a possibility, but I just found it too small/cramped for my tastes. The hubby really liked it and I felt bad saying I didn't. But we have to be honest with each other with this house thing so we don't end up in the situation we were in.
5. The 2-storey. The first we'd looked at. Was nice except it faced onto a really busy road, which shouldn't have been busy since there was an elementary school right across the road. It also had no fence, and the hubby's allergies to cats kicked in halfway through.

There were others, just not jumping to the front of my mind at the moment. I'm sure there will be more. And since we're now free to go "unconditional" ourselves, we are definately able to compete when we do find something nice.

Beyond Chaos

OMFG! Ok what a disaster zone.

THE HOUSE IS SOLD!

YAY!

Ok on that note, the clusterfuck of selling it. The inspection went great, they took that condition off right away, so here we thought great, they'll take the financing condition off by the end of the week. Technically they had until April 4th at 9pm. But no, the week ended, conditions still on. We had gorgeous houses to look at, so were placing offers with our own conditions ending that day. Needless to say everyone is placing "unconditional offers" so we lost 2 houses over the weekend cause we couldn't do that.

Monday April 3, came and went. Still no word. Tuesday April 4, we fully expected to hear something during the day. Nothing. Even our agents were saying well, looks like we'll call all those other people who wanted to look at the house and get them through. We all figured that the offer had fallen through. THEN at 9 bloody exactly! They took the last condition off. FUCK!

OMG I never want to sell a house again.... people are idiots! But at least it's sold. Now we can go out there and place our own unconditional offers and actually compete in this insano-market.

Stress level decreasing...slightly...