Day 21 - January 11, 2013

This morning Dad was moved out of his room in the critical care unit over into the step down unit.  He has had doctors orders to move out of the CCU for several days now because medically, if he stable and there was no reason for him to require that level of care.  However, the hospital is full and so they have been unable to move him until today....and even then he is just down the hall in step down vs. upstairs where they really think he should be.  He got to walk himself over to his new room, which is uncommon for CCU patients.  His defibrillator surgery yesterday went well and he is recovering quickly.  While I visited he kept rubbing the area where the defibrillator went in and telling me about it.  We also went for a few walks around the floor. 

In the morning, the new nurse came in and introduced herself and asked dad a few assessment type questions.  She asked him what the date was an he responded that it was the 21st of December.  She let him know that it was January 11, and he said "Oh".  But then she went on to explain that there are a lot of people who wouldn't know today's date if she asked them and told him not to be discouraged.  I was kind of surprised by his response and explained to him that December 21st is an answer that makes a lot of sense to me....it was the last full day before his accident and that it seems right that it was the date that he remembered.  It was probably the last date that he wrote down or used in any meaningful way for the past few weeks.

The plan for today was to move to the Chelsea Rehab facility.  All day we operated under the assumption that he was ready to go and from our end, all of the doctors and nurses thought he was ready to go as well.  Then, at about 3:45pm on Friday afternoon, we were called and told that instead of moving within the hour as we had thought, Chelsea didn't feel comfortable with dad participating because of his heart issues.  Granted, these were the same heart issues that we thought we had worked through by having his defibrillator implanted and that they were well aware of all week.  I was SO FRUSTRATED.  What even sadder is that Dad had been told about moving to the rehab facility and was really looking forward to it, so when they said no, he was really disappointed.

I called them to ask some further questions and express how frustrated I was that they would let us continue so far down this path without letting us know this earlier....unfortunately, being 4pm on a Friday, everyone was gone for the weekend except for the poor receptionist who answers the phones in that department.  I think what is most frustrating is that his heart situation has not really changed except to improve since the beginning of the week and so they had enough information that they could have communicated their hesitations earlier and we could have been pursuing other options. 

Instead, we are waiting out the weekend at Allegiance until our paperwork can go through for a transfer to St. Joseph Mercy in Ann Arbor.  After the initial frustrations, I think we have all settled down a bit and realize that maybe St. Joe's will be a good move as well.  They have an excellent heart and cardiovascular program and will be able to perform my dad's valve replacement surgery as well as take care of his rehabilitation therapies.  Hopefully, one move and then home instead of two.  Or perhaps, once dad gets the valve replaced if he needs another rehab, Chelsea might be an option at that point.

So in the meantime, we are waiting out the weekend in his hospital room.  In the afternoon, speech therapy stopped by to work with dad.  They had him work through some picture puzzles.  For example, there was one sheet with pictures of stars, diamonds, and circles all over the page.  They asked him to circle all of the stars on the page (no luck).   They also had some simple mazes for him to try to work through on paper (a little better but not really a success).  They had a connect the dots page (no good).  However, the very great news is that they had him try to read and so long as the print was large enough and he was focusing he remembers how to read.  He reads the numbers on the rooms as we walk the hall and he reads the signs that are hanging up in his room.  He read a sign about the Patient Care Hotline....from any room you can dial 4444 if you are at all concerned about whether you are getting good care.  We all laughed that now that he knows that, the hotline might be getting a few extra calls as dad complains about the hospital food and gets frustrated that he cannot walk outside. 

When I got back in the evening, he was up and joking around with everyone.  When I first walked into the room I asked how his therapy session went that afternoon.  He seemed really serious and asked me "Now, what is your name?  Now, you have a daughter, what is her name?  You have a son, what is his name?"  It took me a minute to realize that he was being sarcastic and mimicking the questions that all of the therapists keep asking him again and again.  He is willing to work hard, but thinks that some of the activities and questions that they ask are so silly.  He is constantly being asked questions like "What is an orange? What is this (holding up a pen) and what do you do with it?" and thankfully he is able to answer a lot of these basic questions correctly and laugh at such a silly question.  However, its impossible to figure out what he does and does not know, and sometimes it takes him time to recover some of the vocabulary and other things that are still stored in his mind, but are harder to find and recall when needed.

Later in the evening after I left, dad was moved up to the 6th floor. I hear that the move went well and that over the weekend he should have more freedom to walk around the floor, order food that he wants to eat (or I think we can even bring him in something if we would like), and have a little more space as the room is a bit bigger.