midtoad's messages

Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of updates the past week or so. Ceara’s been out of town and I’ve been pretty busy, so I haven’t gotten a chance to make any updates. We’ll post more news next week.

Until then, I’m going to upload a couple of videos from earlier this week. 

Yesterday my dad attended a cooking class offered for the paraplegics and quadraplegics on his unit. It wasn’t really a cooking class, but rather a group of people cooking together. They had electrical frying pans that you could place on a table, so that the people in wheelchairs could cook. They made club house sandwiches and a fruit pizza for dessert. Unfortunately, my dad is still on pureed foods, so he couldn’t eat any of the food, but he enjoyed being able to interact with the other patients on his unit. We then went back upstairs for my dad’s lunch that he could eat- pureed mac and cheese (which he made me put ketchup on..), pureed peas, cream of mushroom soup, and pureed strawberry cheesecake. 

Later that day, my dad got to try out another power chair. This one had a few more options than the last, such as having the ability to recline. The physiotherapist said that she thinks he’s ready to start training to use the elevators, and drive around the unit. She’s hoping that soon he’ll be able to use this wheel chair as his main one, so he can go around the unit as he pleases, instead of having someone need to push him.

Visits:

This coming week (Thursday 20-thursday 21) I will be out of town, and my dad has decided he doesn’t want to schedule visits during that time. He would like to have a week off of visitors, and it will be hard for him to have to schedule them as well. If anyone is from out of town, and is coming in that week, he will make the exception for them. Please text my dad (403-708-9262) if your coming to calgary next week and would like to visit. Otherwise, continue sending me emails for your preferred times/days for the following week, and I will schedule you in when I return. Thanks for your understanding. 

My dad’s speech pathologist came in on friday, and said that my dad is now allowed to drink fluids! Before he was limited to just water, and pureed foods, so he’s pretty excited to be able to drink juices and milk and coffee. 

My dad has been having shivering fits lately, and they figured out it’s because he is hypersensitive to hot/cold. They have adjusted the temperature in his room to compensate. This has kinda affected our walks, as it’s not quite warm enough to do our long circuit anymore. He goes outside for very brief walks now. He also brings several blankets and wool sweaters with us. 

This morning he was able to fead himself all by himself! Usually someone would hold his elbow up, and he could do the rest. 

Other than that, not much is new. He’s continuing with his rehab, and continuing to improve on driving his power chair.