Tonight's picture was taken on January 17, 2009. Mattie was home from his trip to NYC and as you can see he and Peter built the Empire State Building out of a metal erector set. We bought that set at the Empire State Building gift store. That little green figure at the top was supposed to represent King Kong. Mattie absolutely loved building, creating, and had a natural understanding for how things worked and went together. Which was why I always called him our "little engineer."
Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins.
- Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 62,153,639
- Number of people who died from the virus: 841,981
This morning I was getting my dad showered and dressed and the phone rang. It was the physical therapist who wanted to come over today. So I had to juggle him! He came and worked with both of my parents. However, my dad is dealing with extreme exhaustion and my mom is dealing with swollen feet. The therapist worked with them accordingly. On an aside he was telling me about a physical therapy study about the benefits of doing some exercises throughout the day, rather than at only one time per day. He gave me an example. Let's say you had four patients and patient #1 did one exercise, 20 times, at one time a day; patient #2 did one exercise, ten times, twice a day; and patient #3 did one exercise, 7 times, three times a day, that patient #3 would be in better physical shape. That the body responds to repetition and the muscles develop memory if you work them throughout the day. Fascinating no? Therefore the therapist is trying to inspire my dad to move his body throughout the day, not just hurry through his exercises in the morning and be stagnate the rest of the day.
After walking Sunny, I then packed my parents up and we headed to Falls Church, for a doctor's visit. The doctor examined my mom's legs and feels she is dealing with Chronic Venous Insufficiency. Which is when your leg veins don't allow blood to flow back up to your heart. Normally, the valves in your veins make sure that blood flows toward your heart. But when these valves don't work well, blood can also flow backwards. This can cause blood to collect (pool) in your legs. He wants her to get an ultrasound to rule out blood clots and we will also see a cardiologist. So I will schedule these things tomorrow. But here is a photo of what Chronic Venous Insufficiency looks like. It involves varicose veins, swelling, skin color changes and ulcers (in the later stage).
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