Home health care visits..
These are saving my sanity. Earlier in the week we had two doctors appointments, followups from the in hospital care he was recieving. Apparently the nurse at the oncologists office decided I looked a bit scared and frazzled, imagine that, so she ordered a home health care nurse to visit us twice a week, as well as a physical therapist to monitor his progress and make suggestions for equipment we will need.
Today we had both visits in one day, physical therapy really just consists of her watching him stumble over the mess in the house and try to do this without falling and breaking a hip. Today he nearly danced through the house for her with his walker. I think he thinks if he dazzles the right person they will let him go back to work. Who knows, it may work. The nurse checks his vitals and the progress of his bed sores and asks if he is doing well on the current level of pain medication. What I think neither of these wonderful women realize is they have given me a bit of my sanity back.
Becky, the visiting nurse, upon hearing that I started a blog about our experiences with cancer, suggested I not only use it to chronicle how he I am feeling, but try to chronicle an objective view of his status each day. She suggests I may find it useful, to be able to look back and see how the progress really has been. You know how it goes, you have good days and bad days, and when you have bad days sometimes they may not be as bad as they have been in the past, but its tough to see that when you are mired down in it at the time. Becky thought it would help us both on those tough days if we had a gauge of progress and see that its not as bad as it could be. It would also help us to be better able to gauge if perhaps he could be truly getting worse, or we’ve just had a bad patch.
I like this idea. So here goes. He is able to sit up with no help from me, and without having to stop and rest in between rolling to his side and pushing up to sitting position, or resting from sitting to standing. He was able to get himself in and out of bed without help to use the bedside commode all night and all day today. When accidentally pushing the tv remotes out of reach he was able to stretch up pulling his back fully off the bed and reach them down by his thigh without even groaning. When walking for the PT he didnt stumble, walked at a good pace with his walker all the way to the kitchen then stood there while she made a trip to the car for a catalog. His voice is much clearer today and sounds far stronger than it has since his admission to the hospital.
