Hospital visit

 Today is the first day we have seen Rick since Labor Day and he was much more alert. He stayed awake for a long time today. When we walked into his room, he knew who Dale, Jerry and Mikey were.  When he was asked who I was he said, “Dale’s wife”.  Ok, I can live with that.

Later I went up to him and asked him who I was and he looked me square in the eye and said, “Keith Roberts.” I said, “No I’m not”. He very sternly informed me, “Yes you ARE!”  So some things are coming to him, but he still has a long way to go.

We were all drilling him with questions pretty steady and he answered most of them with a “Yup” or a “Nope”. Most times when the nurse came in to give him medications, she would ask him his name and his birthday and he answered correctly.  But towards the end of our visit he was getting pretty weary and the correct answers were harder to come by.

Today he spent a lot of time on the phone (actually his remote) and was ordering truck parts and wanted to call the Pontiac dealer. Dale told him he better call the Ford dealer instead!

On the bright side he is still trying to feed himself. Now when he needs to go to the bathroom, he will suddenly sit upright and try to get out of bed.  He doesn’t tell them why, but Mary has figured out what it means. If you ask him if he has to go to the bathroom, he says, “No”. But he means, “yes”. When he was in ICU, he knew where the bathroom in the hall was. Later last night they finally had a room and a sitter for him, so they moved him to a regular room.  Room O125. Well, that confused him, so when he wanted to go to the bathroom, he thought he had to go out into the hallway.  Now that they have shown him where it is in his current room, he heads for it.

Right, now what he and Mary need are your prayers, once he is moved to a rehab facility it is going to be a long and winding road to recovery.  There will ups, straight highway and dips in the road along the way.  This is not going to be an overnight success and although this last week has been a good one, he still has miles to go.