Monday (Day 43)

43 Days. *shakes head* WOW.


Let me start by apologizing for my lack of posts this last week. I've been crazy busy dividing my time up with work, visits to Dad, and trying to manage any personal time I have left. Regardless, this weekend saw it's highs and lows. His neurologist was in on Friday and turned on the Neurostimulator for the first time. I wasn't there, but my brothers tell me that his eyes lit up, and he wrote the word "dizzy" on his dry erase board. Keep in mind, we just gave him this board a few days prior, and he couldn't write anything that we could understand. We also bought him some flash cards a while back, but he never took to them. I decided to try them again this weekend, and we played a game. I would show him the card with my Mom sitting behind me, he would say the word and she would try to guess the word based on what he is saying. He was able to say almost 75% of the cards (I didn't show him all of them), and a great deal of them were very recognizable. We brought in Jack again on Sunday, and my Dad was in his wheelchair. We put Jack on his lap, and took a stroll outside. He seemed to enjoy this, but it wore him out pretty good.

My Mom bought him one of those stress balls to help strengthen his hands, and without warning he suddenly threw it across the room to play "ball" with Jack. This was the first time that Jack really interacted with my Dad. My Dad even tried to fake him out with the ol dummy toss trick. Jack goes nuts over the ball...but I don't think he quite understands what is going on with my Dad. He reached up while on his lap at one point and licked his nose. ALL the nurses love Jack, and were quite fond of the site of my Dad up in his chair with Jack on his lap. We watched the Seahawks after Jack left, and then he wanted to hit the sack. I managed to get a "GO SEAHAWKS" out of him, which was awesome. Sounds like his insurance is going to end soon, though. Amazing to me, since we ARE seeing progress. They are going to monitor how he reacts while having the nuerostimulator on for about a week, then assess the situation. I try to block out the financial side of this...our Healthcare system is just disgusting to me. Our country spends so much money on medical techonology and finding cures for life threatening illnesses such as Parkinsons and Cancer....but once we find these cures, who will be able to afford it??!!

My Dad tried this "breakthrough" treatment....and it forever changed him, so I guess they got that part right.