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Ava and I returned home late last night. We had a great visit, but it was tiring for us both. Here's my recap...

Dad is doing well, although he's tired of people telling him that, or telling him how good he looks, because he's still in the process and has along way to go. I'll be honest and say he's far from the man that he was before this happened, but at the same time he is. He might be weak, at times fragile, need assistance with things we all take for granted, and slow to speak, but he is also struggling to let the "real Lowell" out. If you have enough patience, you can see that he is still the same, you just have to be willing and able to see through the haze.

I was able to attend a few appointments with him at the rehab hospital. I was trying to learn as much as I can to help translate his therapy to his everyday life at home. He may only attend therapy for a few hours a few days a week, but we can become our own "therapists" at home. One of the docs agreed that the therapy has to happen at home as much as possible. For example, the speech language pathologists had him do an activity with playing cards. So I got him a few decks of cards and he can now practice it at home. She said playing games was good so I got several games to play, all of which he did really good at, albeit sometimes it's like watching paint dry playing checkers with dad. (He takes a long time contemplating each move!) It was REALLY fun. Playing games was kind of our thing when I was a kid.

During a long drive to his favorite trade-in book store (where he bought a clasic hard-bound edition of Sea Wolf), we had a candid talk about what happened. It's difficult for him to grasp because A) he doesn't remember and B) his short-term memory isn't so great, so he has a hard time holding on to what has already been explained to him. In the words of Dr. Nuero-Psych, it's scary when others have memories of something that happened to you, but you don't. But since his brain was "interrupted," it did not have the ability to make memories. (We've gently told him that he should be grateful that he doesn't remember....) So we had a long talk and I went over the details of what happened. My plan is to write it in essay form for him to read and re-read whenever he feels he needs to.

Jenny is arriving Saturday for a 10-day stint. My next task is to document everything I learned and my ideas for his care/therapy and pass the baton to her.