Today Mom, Dad, Nathan, and I had our "Family Training" session with the PT and OT. The purpose was to take Dad through some paces as if he was at home. We practiced getting in and out of bed, in and out of the car, and navigating the steps into the house. Dad did pretty well on these practical tasks, but he still gets tired quickly and has some balance issues that need to be addressed. The OT tried to accomplish the bathroom issues, getting in and out of the tub, and on and off the toilet but because most bathroom doors are more narrow and a wheelchair may not fit through the opening, we used the walker and by the time we got to the fixtures Dad was "pooped" and was not able to finish the exercise. He has gotten used to the 45 minute sessions but this mornings training was and hour and a half. We did get an idea of what we need to do in preparation for his homecoming.
When he got back to bed, the wound care nurse came in to repack his tunneling in his leg and decided to take a culture. Both nurses have wound care backgrounds and thought that we should have let the wound care doctor open up the tunnel. We asked to see the physiatrist to get his opinion. His opinion was to let the cardiac surgeon look at it. So they repacked it and told us they would let us know when the appointment would be. I took off to take advantage of the beautiful day.
About 2:30 I got a call saying that his appointment was at 2:45 if we wanted to come. Mom was at home as well and so we both went back to the hospital. More paper work. We got in fairly quickly and the CS's nurse came in and unpacked the tunnel and measured etc. She said that she thought that they should keep packing it just as before. When the CS (not the one who did the surgery) came in, he looked at it and said that he suggested that we not pack it or open it up, but just dress it as needed and wait for the culture. His logic was that it couldn't heal with the packing in and if it did abscess it would have to opened up anyway. Anyone out in blogdom have an opinion? So we are going with the CS and told him to write orders so that everyone was on the same page. He also canceled the Wound Center appointment on Monday and set up a follow up visit for next Wednesday.
I nailed down our departure date with the case worker. We will be leaving HS a week from this Friday. This gives us a week and a half to make as much progress as possible and prepare the house to be accessible for Dad.
Dad (all of us) needs an intervention so he can detox from institutional insanity. He is really getting fed up with a lot of the medical minutia and is becoming fixated on the petty picayune. Today it was $75 a pair compression hose. He figures that they have put on $1000 worth since he has been there. So everyone and I mean everyone, from the housekeeper to the cardiac surgeon has heard about poor stewardship. It doesn't matter if it is a regulation or not, there is no excuse for such waste and high dollar charges.
Pray that Lent doesn't last 40 days and Easter arrives early.
God is good!
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