Dad was in bed all the time in the beginning. He was in diapers and didn't communicate much. When he did you could hardly understand what he was trying to say. You never knew what answer you would get when you asked him who was winning the ball game he was watching. Sometimes the team he said was winning wasn't even playing the game!
I'll never forget those first doctor visits at the VA. Each visit had its own challenge from holding dad down while blood was drawn to changing his diaper in the women's restroom. Even though he didn't communicate much it had to be embarrassing for him to have to be taken into the women's restroom.
One thing I did do straight off was go to the local health food store and buy him the best vitamins (or so I thought at the time) his money could buy. I also talked with the dietitian and we started him on an 1800 calorie diabetic diet. He also started with physical and occupational therapy. After all at the time I felt if he got his medications when he needed them, got good vitamins and ate a balanced diabetic diet, got some therapy he should improve, right? .................................He did.
By that next spring Dad was riding the scooter I had purchased for him around the block!
Funny story: One day one of my sitters had dad out on his scooter. She forgot about the speed dial on the dashboard. The one I had taken great pains to bring to her attention. The one where there is a picture on one side of a turtle designating the slow speed and a picture of a rabbit on the other designated the very fast speed. Anyway Kathy comes huffing and puffing through the garage saying, "I don't know how much longer I am going to be able to take your dad out, I could barely keep up with him today!" I thought to myself... Hmmmm. I asked her to come with me and we walked over to the scooter. The speed knob was all the way up to RABBIT! I sat back and got a good visual of this woman running hard behind this old man on a scooter and yelling at my father to stop. That thought along with visualizing my father hunkered down speeding along down the street with a determined look on his face was all I could take. I busted out laughing..... Now there was a seriousness to this of course but one thing I have found is if I didn't find humorous things in some of these very stressful situations, I would go crazy. .....Just a side note, her family thought it hilarious too. In fact they laughed harder than I did! Go figure.
Stay tuned........
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