Hospital to Nursing Home

After dad was admitted because of vomiting blood, he spent 3 nights at Augusta Health.  The following picture was from Sunday night and both of the boys were worn out.  Jeff did an amazing job helping Dad get up and down and to the restroom as well as keeping him calm and explaining what the doctors were telling him.  We spent many many hours at the hospital trying to keep him company and give Mom a break who had been there every single night.  

Unfortunately, we went from this situation to one that was much worse.  While performing the endoscopy to find out where the bleeding was coming from, one of the clamps came off and Dad bled out.  They had to do CPR for 10 mins to get him back.  By the time I left school and got to the hospital, he had coded again but amazingly came back again.  The whole situation was extremely traumatic for all of us.  I was so thankful that Jeff was home and was able to run over and be with my mom before Mike and I could make it there.  The next couple of days were heartbreaking.  Dad was on a ventilator, hooked up to everything you can imagine in ICU.  He did not look like himself at all and was extremely swollen from the CPR.  He had cracked ribs and a collapsed lung from the CPR as well.  He had also had a stroke.  He did not respond to the doctor's tests and  he basically told us that he needed to be taken off life support.

However, in true Dennis fashion he pulled through even after being taken off of everything.  I was having an extremely hard time with the way things happened and how terrible he looked.  On may way back to the hospital just a couple days later when I could not take it anymore and broke down sobbing, I looked up and saw the most beautiful rainbow.  I pulled into a church parking lot and got out to take some pictures and calm myself down.  At that time Jeff called and said that Dad had woken up and asked where I was!!  It truly was a miracle.  I got to the hospital quickly and we had several very nice conversations with Dad even though he had a hard time speaking.  It warmed my heart when he asked for Jeff and just wanted to make sure that Jeff  had everything taken care of, meaning me and my mom.  I think that gave Dad some peace in the end.

*I'm not going to go through everything all over again since it is already on Caring Bridge.

OT and PT at Augusta Health

Emily was Dad's favorite nurse while at Augusta Health, but of course he connected with everyone while he was there and constantly had us laughing.  Some of my favorite lines were - "Emily you have great hair, not grey hair!" (due to the stroke, some of his speech was affected)  "Moo Juice" (referring to Tru Moo chococlate milk) and "this is some good shit" (referring to cranberry juice or moo juice)  He even asked Emily to go with him to the nursing home because she was his favorite.  :)

Once we left Augusta Health we transferred to Shenandoah Nursing. The first few days Dad did really well with therapy, but then things went downhill.  One of the contributing factors to this was the fact that one of the aids stole his fentanyl patch TWO times.  It is too much for me to even write about, but she did end up in jail.  The anger that I feel is unbelievable.  I'm thankful that my mom and my dad had Marcia and Della to talk to and figure all of this out.