Not Quite Sunrise – March 27, 2019

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!