BroganMc
It's not the age, it's the mileage
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2005
- Messages
- 2,991
Ok time for an update.
What happened in the last 48 hours. Well after I posted yesterday (Monday) morning, and after being contact with my dad by phone, I got a distrubing message. He still hadn't seen PT and his nurse was MIA. So my cousin and I raced over to the hospital to find him still stuck in bed, unable to get so much as a bedpan, with a foley catheter still in and the doctor talking about kicking him out the next day. He hadn't walked since Sunday morning, was feeling helpless and didn't know what to do or where to go next.
So I decided it was time to take charge again and go crack some skulls. Tracked down his nurse (Miss Useless) and got absolutely nowhere with her. She always seemed to be on a break or full of excuses why she couldn't get to it right now. So I tracked down his social worker instead. She got PT upstairs and working with him 20 minutes later.
Despite the wasted days of laying in bed, Gm was still getting stronger (he'd been doing his bed exercises and I think got a bit of his fighting spirit back once someone started advocating for him). He managed to walk 75 feet unassisted. No heart issues. His PT said he had three options open to him: in-patient rehab in FL, in-patient in MD or home health care at SSR. She expected within a week he'd be dramatically improved. And according to the rules, if a patient can walk 150 feet they do not qualify for in-patient rehab. So it was up to my dad to decide where to go next.
Now we're in a fully accessible studio at SSR that is actually more accessible than my home. That's why I love it here. Seriously, people need to study how they design these rooms to see how accessibility can be done right. I'm building a roll-in shower modeled after SSR this winter.
After getting Dad back to some semblance of control over himself again, my cousin and I left him last night to do a couple things at Magic Kingdom. We arrived just in time to catch Wishes fireworks from Main Street. My view was blocked by the Halloween decorations but my tall cousin managed to get a center view. I didn't care because I've seen it a thousand times and I'm learning to appreciate the obstructed fireworks views this trip. There's something poetic about. Even with an obstacle Disney is a beautiful place to be.
We rode Pirates (something I can only do with my strong cousin around), IASW and Buzz Lightyear (my cousin beat me 1st time and I somehow managed to beat him 2nd time). In the middle my sis called and had yet another discussion what to do with Dad. My sis had him in a facility for the next 3-4 weeks getting intensive nursing care, but my dad is not so keen on that route. So I listened to her concerns, addressed what I could and noted questions she had to ask the doctor.
I also checked in with my dad's night nurse to see how he was doing and make sure he had the things he needed for the night. The day nurse (Miss Useless) finally got around to taking out his cath at 6:30pm (before the doctor could yell at her probably) but never got my dad the bedside commode for him to practice not using a bedpan. (The patient bathroom is not ADA quality and has a very low seat commode with no grab bars. WHY?! I use the fully accessible public bathroom in the lobby.) So the night nurse, who is fabulous, hunted one down in housekeeping and had it ready for him in the morning.
I finally crashed around 2am.
Tuesday... I woke up at 8:30am when my phone rang. Some silly thing at home that only was good as a wake up call. Tried to call my dad. No answer. So I call the nurses station. Miss Useless on duty again. Grrreat. I ask if she can check on my dad since he's not answering. He was using the bedside commode, I'm told. Ok good. Night nurse did her job so I'll just leave him to it and shower. Get out of the shower and call Dad. No answer. Try his cell phone. No answer. Getting worried now. Did he fall? Did they just leave him stranded on the commode? Call nurse's station. Miss Useless comes on. He was sitting in the chair last she checked. Ok, I can't reach him, is his phone accessible to him? Could you please pop over and check, I'll hold. No, says Miss Useless, I'm too busy. (Doing what?! I wonder.) She tells me to call back in another 10 minutes.
Oh hell. I'll just be there instead. So jump into my shoes and race over to the hospital. This time I leave my cousin behind so he can be in standby and run Disney errands for me if I need him.
I get over to the hospital with a mission in mind. Thankfully I find my dad sitting in his chair, happy as a lark eating breakfast and fiddling with his phones. He was checking his many messages from calls he missed while Miss Useless was too busy to hand him a phone.
We talk. He had been thinking all night what to do next. The doc had been in to see him and said it's up to him. All three options are ok. Dad has had enough of hospitals and really doesn't want to go to an in-patient but I still have my sis's questions and concerns rummaging around in my head. So I offer to go dig up info.
Find Miss Useless and have her page the doctor so I can talk to him. Also see if i can track down the social worker and PT. While I'm doing that I see PT waltz into the floor like the A Team. I call them the "Pain & Torture Specialists". Anyone who's had PT knows what I'm talking about. They cheat to make you work harder, you hate their guts but they get you to do things you just know are impossible. I wouldn't have the independence I have today if they hadn't been egging me on as a kid.
I greet the PT Team and ask if they are by chance seeing my dad that morning. Yup, they are just signing in. So I warn him to get ready. That means hanging up on my brother and getting his breakfast tray moved away. I also move the many get well cards he's received from DISers. Yes, Ali & the Boys, the card arrived from Scotland. Also many others I'll publicly recognize as soon as I jot down their names. They were very sweet and perked him up to know his story brings joy to others. You remind him he means something in this world. He needs that and appreciates it so much right now.
PT starts working with Dad. He does exercises in the chair and then gets up to walk. He's doing this all on his own with the aid of a walker. It's hard, hurts and he's damn careful. For some reason the janitor decides it's time to buff the floor as he's walking down the hall (I give more evil daggers from my eyes but the man's clueless). Despite the distractions of people running about, chattering voice and being dressed solely in a hospital gown the man walks 100 feet and back. I make sure I stand back (or sit back in my chair rather) and keep my mouth shut. Seems despite all the other distractions only my "looking good Dad" comments get the "shut up, I'm busy" chastisement. I know this. He's determined, anxious and it's hard work. Yet you only feel comfortable griping at the people you trust most.
Still he gets back to his chair and finishes up his exercises. The doc calls and I ask him the sis's questions. He answers them all away and says his only concern for my dad is sending him to an inaccessible place with no help. So I explain exactly what the setup is here. Ground floor unit, size of room, layout of bathroom, bedroom, bed height and the help he has in my cousin and I. He's satisfied and says it's up to my dad to decide.
We talk to PT again about the possibilities. Dad really wants to do home health care but are we able to handle him. Is this the right choice for him? PT is confident he is strong and getting stronger despite all the weekend setbacks and Miss Useless neglect. His heart rate is normal after the exercise so he's tolerating it all well, two days in a row.
Ok, everyone leaves and Dad and I talk. What do we do? We go over the options. We talk about my sibs. Seems they weren't just upsetting me this weekend but driving my dad nuts too. So we bemoan if only we weren't set to leave SSR on Sunday. He could really use another week there. I decide we can try eliminating possibilities.
Let me call Disney and have them tell me we can't stay any longer. I call my Guide for help. He talks to the manager and I get a call back. Despite fully expecting to be told "heck no" Disney pulls out some pixie dust and magically gets me our room for 5 more days. It means borrowing points from next year (and giving us an excuse to rethink that summer fiasco trip in lieu of Fall '09) and lots of heavy lifting from the Front Desk, but now Dad has an option he wants. 9-10 days of convalescing at Saratoga Springs.
So that's where we are now. Tell the Social Worker what he wants, then she passes off to the Home Health Care coordinator, who then gets a wheelchair and walker and organizes PT & OT here. Call my cousin (who thankfully can extend his stay another week... seriously the man is a prince!) and he starts rearranging the room a little to make it even easier for my dad.
I call my sibs to give them the news (and take the heat of guilt & concern off Dad's shoulders) and finally head back to SSR.
My cousin has been waiting around most of the day so after dinner we head to EPCOT for fireworks. This time I meet a family with kids about my nieces & nephews ages taking their grandma on a Disney trip. The kids tell me about their thick packet of homework, their Disney cruise and all the fun things their doing. My cousin fetches some Potato Leek Soup and the fireworks leave me happy instead of weepy this time. I think, I believe my dad and I will go on from all this mess.
It's been an adventurous couple weeks. Lots of anxiety, lots of help, lots of torment and changes, but through it all I've learned a lot.
Now the next hurdle comes in getting my dad here. He needs a day or so to get acclimated and then I expect (and hope) we get him around this corner of being helpless and feeble to independent-minded and determined. He's already looking forward to breakfast at AP and some rolling strolls around the resort. At the very least no more hospital noises and useless nurses.
But for my cousin and I it means some damn hard work ahead. My cousin is the brawn and I'm the brains of this operation. We've already made plans of how to handle GM's tantrums (you know you have them when you're recovering) and when we can take breaks (so we don't kill him). We (GM, my cousin and I) are all agreed that if the sibs want to come down again they can get their own rooms and visit. My dad and I love my sibs but we also know their perils.
So if you see a couple of folks strolling around SSR in wheelchairs the next week, one an old guy in a mohawk (with just a touch of purple), be sure to say hi. Also tell my cousin (he'll be the tall guy pushing) he's doing a good thing.
Also wishes us a bit of pixie dust that all goes well. I'll check in again when I can.
What happened in the last 48 hours. Well after I posted yesterday (Monday) morning, and after being contact with my dad by phone, I got a distrubing message. He still hadn't seen PT and his nurse was MIA. So my cousin and I raced over to the hospital to find him still stuck in bed, unable to get so much as a bedpan, with a foley catheter still in and the doctor talking about kicking him out the next day. He hadn't walked since Sunday morning, was feeling helpless and didn't know what to do or where to go next.
So I decided it was time to take charge again and go crack some skulls. Tracked down his nurse (Miss Useless) and got absolutely nowhere with her. She always seemed to be on a break or full of excuses why she couldn't get to it right now. So I tracked down his social worker instead. She got PT upstairs and working with him 20 minutes later.
Despite the wasted days of laying in bed, Gm was still getting stronger (he'd been doing his bed exercises and I think got a bit of his fighting spirit back once someone started advocating for him). He managed to walk 75 feet unassisted. No heart issues. His PT said he had three options open to him: in-patient rehab in FL, in-patient in MD or home health care at SSR. She expected within a week he'd be dramatically improved. And according to the rules, if a patient can walk 150 feet they do not qualify for in-patient rehab. So it was up to my dad to decide where to go next.
Now we're in a fully accessible studio at SSR that is actually more accessible than my home. That's why I love it here. Seriously, people need to study how they design these rooms to see how accessibility can be done right. I'm building a roll-in shower modeled after SSR this winter.
After getting Dad back to some semblance of control over himself again, my cousin and I left him last night to do a couple things at Magic Kingdom. We arrived just in time to catch Wishes fireworks from Main Street. My view was blocked by the Halloween decorations but my tall cousin managed to get a center view. I didn't care because I've seen it a thousand times and I'm learning to appreciate the obstructed fireworks views this trip. There's something poetic about. Even with an obstacle Disney is a beautiful place to be.
We rode Pirates (something I can only do with my strong cousin around), IASW and Buzz Lightyear (my cousin beat me 1st time and I somehow managed to beat him 2nd time). In the middle my sis called and had yet another discussion what to do with Dad. My sis had him in a facility for the next 3-4 weeks getting intensive nursing care, but my dad is not so keen on that route. So I listened to her concerns, addressed what I could and noted questions she had to ask the doctor.
I also checked in with my dad's night nurse to see how he was doing and make sure he had the things he needed for the night. The day nurse (Miss Useless) finally got around to taking out his cath at 6:30pm (before the doctor could yell at her probably) but never got my dad the bedside commode for him to practice not using a bedpan. (The patient bathroom is not ADA quality and has a very low seat commode with no grab bars. WHY?! I use the fully accessible public bathroom in the lobby.) So the night nurse, who is fabulous, hunted one down in housekeeping and had it ready for him in the morning.
I finally crashed around 2am.
Tuesday... I woke up at 8:30am when my phone rang. Some silly thing at home that only was good as a wake up call. Tried to call my dad. No answer. So I call the nurses station. Miss Useless on duty again. Grrreat. I ask if she can check on my dad since he's not answering. He was using the bedside commode, I'm told. Ok good. Night nurse did her job so I'll just leave him to it and shower. Get out of the shower and call Dad. No answer. Try his cell phone. No answer. Getting worried now. Did he fall? Did they just leave him stranded on the commode? Call nurse's station. Miss Useless comes on. He was sitting in the chair last she checked. Ok, I can't reach him, is his phone accessible to him? Could you please pop over and check, I'll hold. No, says Miss Useless, I'm too busy. (Doing what?! I wonder.) She tells me to call back in another 10 minutes.
Oh hell. I'll just be there instead. So jump into my shoes and race over to the hospital. This time I leave my cousin behind so he can be in standby and run Disney errands for me if I need him.
I get over to the hospital with a mission in mind. Thankfully I find my dad sitting in his chair, happy as a lark eating breakfast and fiddling with his phones. He was checking his many messages from calls he missed while Miss Useless was too busy to hand him a phone.
We talk. He had been thinking all night what to do next. The doc had been in to see him and said it's up to him. All three options are ok. Dad has had enough of hospitals and really doesn't want to go to an in-patient but I still have my sis's questions and concerns rummaging around in my head. So I offer to go dig up info.
Find Miss Useless and have her page the doctor so I can talk to him. Also see if i can track down the social worker and PT. While I'm doing that I see PT waltz into the floor like the A Team. I call them the "Pain & Torture Specialists". Anyone who's had PT knows what I'm talking about. They cheat to make you work harder, you hate their guts but they get you to do things you just know are impossible. I wouldn't have the independence I have today if they hadn't been egging me on as a kid.
I greet the PT Team and ask if they are by chance seeing my dad that morning. Yup, they are just signing in. So I warn him to get ready. That means hanging up on my brother and getting his breakfast tray moved away. I also move the many get well cards he's received from DISers. Yes, Ali & the Boys, the card arrived from Scotland. Also many others I'll publicly recognize as soon as I jot down their names. They were very sweet and perked him up to know his story brings joy to others. You remind him he means something in this world. He needs that and appreciates it so much right now.
PT starts working with Dad. He does exercises in the chair and then gets up to walk. He's doing this all on his own with the aid of a walker. It's hard, hurts and he's damn careful. For some reason the janitor decides it's time to buff the floor as he's walking down the hall (I give more evil daggers from my eyes but the man's clueless). Despite the distractions of people running about, chattering voice and being dressed solely in a hospital gown the man walks 100 feet and back. I make sure I stand back (or sit back in my chair rather) and keep my mouth shut. Seems despite all the other distractions only my "looking good Dad" comments get the "shut up, I'm busy" chastisement. I know this. He's determined, anxious and it's hard work. Yet you only feel comfortable griping at the people you trust most.
Still he gets back to his chair and finishes up his exercises. The doc calls and I ask him the sis's questions. He answers them all away and says his only concern for my dad is sending him to an inaccessible place with no help. So I explain exactly what the setup is here. Ground floor unit, size of room, layout of bathroom, bedroom, bed height and the help he has in my cousin and I. He's satisfied and says it's up to my dad to decide.
We talk to PT again about the possibilities. Dad really wants to do home health care but are we able to handle him. Is this the right choice for him? PT is confident he is strong and getting stronger despite all the weekend setbacks and Miss Useless neglect. His heart rate is normal after the exercise so he's tolerating it all well, two days in a row.
Ok, everyone leaves and Dad and I talk. What do we do? We go over the options. We talk about my sibs. Seems they weren't just upsetting me this weekend but driving my dad nuts too. So we bemoan if only we weren't set to leave SSR on Sunday. He could really use another week there. I decide we can try eliminating possibilities.
Let me call Disney and have them tell me we can't stay any longer. I call my Guide for help. He talks to the manager and I get a call back. Despite fully expecting to be told "heck no" Disney pulls out some pixie dust and magically gets me our room for 5 more days. It means borrowing points from next year (and giving us an excuse to rethink that summer fiasco trip in lieu of Fall '09) and lots of heavy lifting from the Front Desk, but now Dad has an option he wants. 9-10 days of convalescing at Saratoga Springs.
So that's where we are now. Tell the Social Worker what he wants, then she passes off to the Home Health Care coordinator, who then gets a wheelchair and walker and organizes PT & OT here. Call my cousin (who thankfully can extend his stay another week... seriously the man is a prince!) and he starts rearranging the room a little to make it even easier for my dad.
I call my sibs to give them the news (and take the heat of guilt & concern off Dad's shoulders) and finally head back to SSR.
My cousin has been waiting around most of the day so after dinner we head to EPCOT for fireworks. This time I meet a family with kids about my nieces & nephews ages taking their grandma on a Disney trip. The kids tell me about their thick packet of homework, their Disney cruise and all the fun things their doing. My cousin fetches some Potato Leek Soup and the fireworks leave me happy instead of weepy this time. I think, I believe my dad and I will go on from all this mess.
It's been an adventurous couple weeks. Lots of anxiety, lots of help, lots of torment and changes, but through it all I've learned a lot.
Now the next hurdle comes in getting my dad here. He needs a day or so to get acclimated and then I expect (and hope) we get him around this corner of being helpless and feeble to independent-minded and determined. He's already looking forward to breakfast at AP and some rolling strolls around the resort. At the very least no more hospital noises and useless nurses.
But for my cousin and I it means some damn hard work ahead. My cousin is the brawn and I'm the brains of this operation. We've already made plans of how to handle GM's tantrums (you know you have them when you're recovering) and when we can take breaks (so we don't kill him). We (GM, my cousin and I) are all agreed that if the sibs want to come down again they can get their own rooms and visit. My dad and I love my sibs but we also know their perils.
So if you see a couple of folks strolling around SSR in wheelchairs the next week, one an old guy in a mohawk (with just a touch of purple), be sure to say hi. Also tell my cousin (he'll be the tall guy pushing) he's doing a good thing.
Also wishes us a bit of pixie dust that all goes well. I'll check in again when I can.
and 
and 
for a smooth recuperation at SSR for GM. And also for you to get to transfer onto rides with your cousin's help...Isn't Test Track one of those? Hope you get over to Epcot for that if that's your fancy. Thinking of all of you...
We were gone (HHI) for the weekend and I just read this whole thread to get caught up. 
)
when I read that 
& 
to you, your cousin & GM
Heartwarming news Brogan! Great to hear GM was sprung and is back at home.
