Back from “Detroit”, part 1: update on Dad

Last updated on: March 1, 2015 at 10:24 pm by Jane the Actuary

Back from “Detroit”, part 1: update on Dad 2015-03-01T22:24:21-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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So we were at mom and dad’s over Labor Day weekend, and I thought I’d start with a brief update on Dad, for regular readers.

A month ago, when we last visited, Dad was still at the rehab facility. He’s been home for a week and a half now. The good news: physically, he’s far from top form, but a lot better than could have been the case. He’s got his walker, in fact, two walkers, one for upstairs and one for downstairs, but he can actually navigate the stairs. They are in possession of grab bars for the toilet and shower, which my husband was planning on installing this weekend, but concluded they need a professional, so as to not risk damaging the tilework. And he shuffles when he walks, but the walking, and the standing, itself, at least from all appearances, isn’t as difficult as I had feared. He still has therapists coming several times a week for the next several weeks — they’re not sure exactly for how long — and has exercises he’s supposed to be doing.

The bigger difficulty will be nudging my dad to maintain physical activity over the long term, after the therapists have signed their log sheets and said goodbye, especially since he’s now under a 4 month driving prohibition, and will be dependent on my mom to get anywhere (the nearest “destination” of any kind is the shopping mall 1/2 mile away, and even that, I imagine, doesn’t offer anything of interest). We spent some time over the weekend trying to convince my parents to check out the senior activities (hot lunch, card groups, water and chair exercise) at the community center, and will continue to prod them.

And mentally? It’s hard to say. My husband spent a lot of the weekend working on taxes with him and Dad followed his calculations, but couldn’t have done the math on his own — although, to be sure, these were really complicated gain/loss calculations, so that doesn’t necessarily speak to his ability to manage his day-to-day financial affairs. He made other mistakes in simple things that cause us to be concerned. And the short-term memory fails periodically, thinking, for instance, that it had been three days, rather than a week and three days, since he came home.

So that’s that — more to come in the future.

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