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.