Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2006. Mattie was four years old and enjoying a trip to San Diego. Mattie absolutely LOVED Legoland and could spend an entire day there exploring Legos and all the rides. Unlike me and my family, Mattie loved roller coasters. He was all about the adventure and fortunately Peter had no problem joining in the fun.
Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins.
- number of people diagnosed with the virus: 2,023,347
- number of people who died from the virus: 113,820
I took a photo of my dad with his physical therapist, Jon, today. Jon spotted my dad as he went up the stairs for the first time today! It was quite a sight to see and my dad was thrilled with the prospect of sleeping in his own bed tonight.
My dad walked up the stairs. Jon had him walk to his bedroom and wanted to see him get in and out of bed. After that, he had my dad walk to the bathroom, and then back to the bedroom to get in and out of bed again. It was a lot of walking for my dad.
But it did not end there. He then did strength building and balance exercises with my dad!
I took photos of every exercise, so that we could do them each day!
There were six different exercises, and I would say the whole session was 60 minutes. Prior to Jon's visit, we had the visiting nurse come in and check my dad's vitals and to do an assessment. My dad's blood pressure, sugar levels and oxygenation are all normal and stable. So he got an excellent report today, on top of which we are finding that he is becoming more lucid and less confused and disoriented.
I am quite convinced that my dad experienced delirium. It was a very frightening and disheartening set of symptoms (restlessness, agitation, exhaustion, withdrawn, quiet, and in a mental fog) that came on suddenly and the fear was that things would always be this way.
On Friday, we meet my dad's occupational therapist for the first time. It is hard balancing the host of people who come over during the week and for the most part, I tell them they have to come in the morning, because as the day wears on, my dad gets too tired to participate.
My days start around 6:30am, in which I get up, and get myself dressed and ready to go. Then by 8am, I make sure my dad gets up. I help him change into clean clothes and then we have breakfast. I am finding having structure to his day helps him and it aiding in his physical and mental recovery. Basically we keep him up, engaged, and moving to some extent until 3pm. At that point, he relaxes in his chair, and then I can focus on packing things up for my parents to help make their move from one house into another next week go more smoothly. Fortunately Peter is with me for this move, so I can focus on energy on my parents.
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