Month: March 2019

Here comes the sun!

View through my window this morning as the day begins.

Been a busy day so far, just catching up from being gone for so long. A couple of long conversations with my Dad, who is VERY happy right now as he seems to be getting his life back on track after his accident.

He got his golf cart back yesterday and he is a happy guy! He says he is doing much better and sounds like it too on the phone.

He told me that they were making a movie about him and someone was filming him while asking him questions.

Then a little later this video clip arrived in my inbox. Short and sweet…filmed by the folks there at Elan, where he lives. Very, very nice!

About Dad.

Pretty cool…he is a movie star now. 😉

Mandy: This is my hobby!

Happy Thursday!

 

As the Sun was getting ready to say ‘hello’, the Moon was saying ‘have a good day’ as it was getting ready to set.  It was pretty pronounced in the sky with the help of the clouds.

The Sun, not wanting to be totally upstaged by the Moon, decided to peek out of the clouds.

So I will start from the beginning regarding our FL trip.

We stayed at the Recreation Plantation which is close to where Dad was located. We always stay there when we visit my Dad.  They have been pretty good to us for the most part.  Back when Hurricane Irma went through nearly two years ago Dad had another accident the day after the Hurricane hit. We needed a place to stay and they were not open, so we went to another spot which was out in the middle of an unmowed field with no elec, or hookups. We were pretty concerned about the heat and humidity as we had Mandy with us.  So we went ahead and drove over to Recreation Plantation, they really weren’t fully opened, but they accommodated us right away on the only loop that had Elec. because it was on the same elec. line as a little medical center next to it. So that was pretty nice, we went, picked up the camper and moved in.  So they always manage to fit us in someplace when we need it most.

I will also say, they have some pretty nice sunsets. This is February 2019 in Lady Lake/The Villages, FL Lots of campers there.

Husband worked from the camper while we were down here. We are pretty lucky he is able to do that!  His company is just great with all of this kind of thing!

I spent most of my time in the hospital with Dad as he was in one of the worst hospitals in the area.  Before we were done I had reported the entire staff on the 5th floor and met with the director who had only been there for three weeks. So much happened during this time, regarding Dad and his care, I just don’t want to go into it all.  I will say that they sent him to his rehab facility about two weeks after his admission to the hospital.  And the rehab sent him BACK to the hospital because he was in such bad condition. Apparently had a heart attack that no one caught.  But when he went back to the hospital they were much better with him as he was put into PCU…which is one step less than CPU. They had only 3 patients to 1 nurse and the nurses were wonderful there.  Plus I was around all of the time so maybe that helped some. I don’t know…

Ever seen so many wires…this is where they just got him to move into a chair.  But the worst thing is that he was moved to a different floor after a few days…and just like the weeks prior to being sent back from the rehab  he laid in bed with next to no PT (for 3 weeks total he was in the hosp and received PT twice)…which was moving him from the bed to the chair or the pot). During his hospital time they moved him 8 times. The man was clear and physically able when he went in and was reduced to a non-mobile, confused, depressed person with what became Hospital Dementia in that amount of time because of lack of caring by the hospital. At first I was afraid to complain about the things that were happening, that if I did it would get worse for him.  But just couldn’t let things go as I was growing more concerned and they were becoming ever more casual with the care.  This is a hospital in a MAJOR senior citizen area that everyone is afraid of and doesn’t want to go there.  You would think that because there is a lot of money in the area that this place would be the BEST…but now after the fact, I just read a news story about the people in the area bringing the management to task because it was just released from Medicare/Medicaid that it was one of 237 hospitals in the nation that only has a 1 star rating…so doesn’t get any lower than that.  Of course I don’t live down there, and Dad was admitted before I got there, so I had no idea. 😦 But I sure figured it out pretty quickly.  Totally frustrating having to deal with them.  AND they sent him to the rehab without telling me (the first time), I have POA and also for the health portion, HIPPA permissions and so on.  They were supposed to let me know what was going on because he wasn’t ‘with it’ any longer.  But I went to see him in his room after dinner one night (and I’d been there during the day)…and he was GONE.  They said Oh yes, he went to rehab 40 minutes ago.  Somewhere in there, he’d had the heart attack which they never noticed.  But they did at the rehab when they were receiving him and some fire paramedics showed up, right after I got over to the rehab, to put him in the ambulance and take him into emergency…back to that danged hospital. Fortunately he was in a different part of it this time. Thank goodness. And it was a cardiac event so in he went…no waiting.  We sat in the waiting room for sometime before we were allowed to go back where he was at.

But after all that he went into the highest rated Rehab center, which I did have time to do some research on.  And did pretty well there.  Those folks were SO nice to him, no complaints there. He started coming out of his Hospital Dementia, which had been terribly upsetting to witness him developing and was beginning to try and make sense of everything happening to him.

When he went into rehab, there I saw he was being taken care of nicely.  SO we went ahead and left for a week to take a portion of our planned vacation that we’d paid for in advance.  I had Dad’s friends coming by every day we were gone and they were letting me know how he was doing.  I also called in to check on him.  But I have to say, at that point, we could really use this break.  So the next few posts will highlight the week we were on the vacation portion of our stay down in FL.

Mandy: Yes, it was nice having a warm bathroom and warm walks in the middle of February!

Happy Wednesday!

Sunrise! This is what it looked like when I first opened the shades.

View out the window looks like this right now.

No alteration of the colors. Quite the beauty this morning.

I haven’t posted for a while because we have been gone for nearly two months. It was an unexpected trip to Florida due to my Dad’s accident. He ended up having a number of complications after his Golf Cart accident and was in the hospital for a little over three weeks and then in rehab 3 weeks, then we stuck around another week while he was adjusting to living back at his home.  We left to come home because my oldest is having a surgery this week and we wanted to be here for that.  But Dad (age 88) is doing okay, still adjusting, but getting there.

The last day we were there with him we took him to his and our favorite place to eat in his area, Eaton Beach.

Mandy came to visit him too.  He loves dogs and always carries dog treats with him. Especially for his little friend, Elvis.

This little dog is truly special.  He is just a love. He and my Dad are pretty tight…though he belongs to a neighbor, they just can’t seem to get enough of each other. 🙂  Elvis really missed Dad while he was in the hospital and physical rehabilitation. Pat is his owner and she was a big help in letting Elvis visit him in rehab and hanging with Dad as much as possible to help Dad emotionally while going through all that happened.

When I picked up Dad’s clothes from the hospital to wash them, he was in a hospital gown, I turned his pants upside down when folding them…a bunch of dog treats fell out of the pocket all over the foot of his bed.  Like I said, he loves dogs, but won’t own another, though I have mentioned several times he should get one.  We had a dog much of my childhood life.

A lot happened while we were down there and so as time goes I will be posting portions of our stay.  We were supposed to be going down for about 2.5 weeks for vacation the middle of February, but Dad’s accident changed all that.  We went early and stuck around for a lot longer.  Because of not knowing how long we would be down there, we took Mandy with us instead of putting her in a kennel for a couple of weeks.  She does well in the camper, but doesn’t like the ‘driving part’ of it.  So normally it is easier, depending on the vacation, on her to leave her at her favorite home away from home.

She seemed to enjoy being with us most of the time we were ‘still’ and not moving in our camper. She owns quite a bit of real estate when it comes to the camper, considering the total square footage vs square footage for Mandy.  Above is her bed in the ‘bedroom’ of the camper.

Mandy: Yes, sleeping in front of the fireplace in the living room of the camper and having a bathroom where it is in the 70’s and 80’s instead of -20s is not all that bad!

A benefit of being down in FL when needing to be with Dad is that it got us out of a LOT of snow in MN and is at least 70 degrees warmer during Feb and March.

Huge thanks to my oldest and her family for babysitting our kitties while we were gone. Love you guys!!!

(yyyeeeahhhh – that is supposed to look like me…so funny.)

More to come.

Happy Tuesday!