We brought Dad home on Sunday. Let me tell you, everyday has been a rollercoaster. Poor Josie hasn’t even been home yet. This will be her 2nd going on 3rd week by his side. She has had the opportunity to go home 2 nights during the entire ordeal, but mostly just to take a shower, a short nap and back to the hospital again. Our other sister has also taken a lot of her time to devote to his care. I try to help as much as I can. Tugging around a 2 year old isn’t easy when you have to play caregiver to your parents. With my husband’s hectic schedule at the hospital (his shifts change every week), it’s almost impossible to get him available for our daughter.  In fact, I’m going to be spending all day tomorrow and all day Saturday at my parent’s house with the little one. Josie will take over the night shift and our other sister is watching our mom while our caregiver is off.

  An Exhausting Return

Poor Dad was all beat up from his hospital stay. In fact, he looked so bad when the ambulance dropped him home last Sunday that I was worried we’d need to take him back to the ER. He was so lethargic the next few days that Josie had a hard time feeding him. Every other day he’d be up and down. One day he’d be lethargic, the next, alert. Josie has gotten maybe 2-3 hours of sleep every night. He also had a string of home care nurses and therapists come by to see him. For the next month he will be undergoing therapy and rehabilitation while he is in recovery. He still has pneumonia and his situation is still very volatile. 

Not a Pleasant Recovery

Because of Dad’s aspiration pneumonia, he was put on a strict regimen of pureed food. You can only imagine how frustrating this is for him. No wonder why he doesn’t want to eat. Everything we give him has to be mushed up and thickened with food thickener. Even water has to be thickened with this cornstarch type stuff.  The reason for this is because his swallowing reflexes are weak. The doctor suspected that he may have had silent aspiration pneumonia from inhaling the food particles. So, until a Speech Therapist tests him next week, he’s going to be stuck with baby food and blended food. I felt bad because the other day he told me he wanted to eat a hamburger. 

More Stress Ahead

We have alot on our plate now. We have severe challenges ahead: physically and financially. Before, Dad was so independent. We only needed a caregiver for Mom. Now, we need another caregiver for Dad. The problem is, we’re like every other middle class family in America, we can’t afford it! Our parents have almost spent down their entire  assets that we think they can qualify for Medicaid. But, the whole process can take months. How are we going to get someone to watch him? We’re asking ourselves the same questions again like we did for mom. It’s one thing when you have one parent with special needs, but now we’re talking about two people with disabilities that need one on one care. 

It’s a burden that unfortunately, some of our other siblings do not understand and are not experiencing. So the burden is placed on us to come up with viable solutions and just fill them in when we can and hopefully they can step up to the plate with any help. I’m really trying not to blow a fuse and go crazy because of these challenges. Yet, we owe it to our parents to provide the best care for their needs. Despite what experts have told me in the past, assisted living and/or nursing homes are out of the question. Been there done that.

I remember them telling us, “Oh you just need to give it a chance, they’ll get used to it.” I’m sorry, they could never get used to it. But with every choice you make, there’s a potential consequence, and so here we are struggling to find a solution to this new problem. 

Anyway, I will post a picture of my dad this weekend . I’ll post another update in a few days.

Good news! Dad gets to go home today, actually tonight. He’s not completely out of the woods yet. He still has pneumonia. So, he’s going to have a team of home care professionals come and help him with his rehabilitation efforts. He has to have another Xray to check on his progress. He’s also going to have another swallow test. Temporarily (hopefully), he’s going to have to eat pureed foods and thickened liquids. So that rules out buffalo wings! We have so many challenges ahead of us that I can’t quite wrap my head around it. I’m trying to stop myself from stressing out too much and just work on getting the resources we need to assist us with both of our parents’ needs now.  Anyway, more later! I have to have a couple of hours of time with my sweethearts and we will be heading out to dinner later on.