My Own Thoughts

My uncle took pics. This is the therapist getting Dad to move his arm. He has electrodes on the arm to help stimulate the muscles. They do that two times a day.

Yesterday he moved his thumb. Three days ago he went to the bathroom on the commode. Yesterday he used the walker to get to the elevator, a whole 20 ft. The doctors are keeping him in the hospital until Feb. 16. Yeah!

Which is where I have been the last three days pretty much all day long. I’m glad I am able to spend time with Dad, but I am also zonked from all this. I need to wash my hair and all I want to do is read.

Dad got in and out of a car today on his own for physical therapy. He told my sister she needed to go get R, my niece. He was right. It was time to go get her. He put on his own shoes and socks and put on and took off his shirt. He and [...]

I am not getting done everything I want to get done or need to do or think I need to do, so I have been feeling like I am being unproductive. But really I am getting done a lot. Today I: went to the courthouse to get my new license tags got the oil changed [...]

Tomorrow the safe and quiet change of government will happen again. We will have a new president. And the new president will be half-black. Everyone who talks about him says he is black. And he is. But he is also white. But I think that Dr. King, Jr would see much in his election and [...]

My Monday night class did not make. Usually I would be sad about that, but they also offered me a Wednesday night class to take instead. However, since my father is in the hospital and I am up there so much, I decided that I needed to have more free time rather than less, so [...]

said, “Daddy loves you. Bye Bye.” That’s how he normally ends our phone conversations. That’s how he ended it today. Whoo hoo! Hope he comes back all the way.

Change… That’s what Barack Obama promised. And that’s what I got. Once he was elected I could no longer stand to listen to talk radio. It was just too painful. For two months, my radio was silent. That’s change I believe in. Then yesterday, I turned it on again. And it’s not all-anti-Barack all the [...]

It’s obvious from the fact that I mention movies like “MASH” and “The Princess Bride” which my students have never seen. One of my favorite actors was Ricardo Montalban, of whom I read today on Happy Catholic. He was married for 63 years to his wife, until her death in 2007. And he was a [...]

Yesterday he couldn’t come up with a single fruit. I tried to get him to tell the speech therapist banana. Dad, what’s your favorite ice cream? I don’t know. Grama used to make it. We’d sit on it and crank. (Cranking motion here.) He shook his head. Ba- Speech therapist: She’s giving you the first [...]

Microbiologybytes on infection control in hospitals. Errors are compounded by a totemic belief in the miracle properties of alcohol hand rubs which adorn every bed but which distract from more effective handwashing procedures. Did I need to be visited by the person flitting from ward to ward to fiddle with the TV/radio/phone console above every [...]

My dad has aphasia (can’t say what he wants), para-aphasia (says a different word, perhaps similar), neo-logism (makes up words), and perservating (says the same word for lots of different things). He said raccoon for: beaver acorn rhinoceros He said airplane for helicopter moon for broom Etc It was not a pleasant experience to watch [...]

My dad had two strokes at the same time (or close enough). One effected his balance, the other his right side motor skills. The doctors have been saying (up until yesterday) that he would recover at least 90% function and could reasonably expected to get all the way back. Yesterday they said his confusion over [...]

When you’re up, you’re up. And when you’re down, you’re down. But when you’re only halfway up, you’re neither up nor down. mental illness

- Couples may be able to enhance one another’s health by being more physically affectionate with one another, new research in Psychosomatic Medicine shows. Couples who underwent training in “warm touch enhancement” and practiced the technique at home had higher levels of oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone” and the “cuddle chemical,” while their [...]

Today it is 2007 and Reagan is president. However he knows all his kids’ names and my sons’ names as well. He laughed at the baby and chased her with his hand when she came to visit. He did all his therapy in rehab (his first day there) and was exhausted, sleeping even in the [...]

Thi s is atrocious. I will blog about the travesty later. Or maybe not. But I will include it in my Silence paper. Want to see this later. Rufus the slingshot man. Accountability weak for high school transition to college. If we hold colleges accountable for numbers graduated, which people want to do, then surely [...]

No, it’s not. And in 1968 I know for a fact we were not in New Jersey. In 1968 we lived in the exact same town we live in now. Houston. (Hey, 40 years ago I lived here. I live here now. You’d never know I lived in about thirty places between the two, would [...]