Hi Family and Friends,
I chose to keep everyone updated through this blog, This way you can check up on things in your own time and read this at your leisure. Also I have been reading many blogs from people going through the same thing and found it very helpful that I felt I needed to pass on my experiences to hopefully help someone else.
This is all so new to me, being a caregiver and blogging! His illness is so out of our hands that its is very hard to feel in control of anything, including our own emotions. So I felt if I do this I can at least be some sort of control by passing on his progress to you and possibly being support to someone else. I am not sure if that makes any sense, I just want to help in some way. It is so difficult not being able to make it all better for my dad and it makes me feel very small at times.
OK, enough about me.
A little history:
My dad had 2 mini strokes in May of 2007. The strokes affected his speech and he suffered from aphasia. He also lost his periphial vision in his right eye. Nothing else seemed to be affected and the aphasia went away pretty fast. In the first week of August 2007 he suffered another mini stroke that the docs now thought might be a siezer. He had another MRI and a large 4.5 cm mass was now discovered on his brain. My brother was living with my dad at the time in Florida and as soon as we found out this information, my sister and I flew down there immediatly. The tumor is in a place that is basically inoperable. He would have been paralyized in half of his body and being 82, this would make life quality very hard.
My dad chose Cyberknife radiation. It worked out great that there was an opening in the next couple of days and we could get him in. After that we flew him back up to Michigan so he could live with me. He needs someone with him 24/7 and my brother and sister work full time.
He was adjusting pretty well in my house and we had a good routine going for the next 7 weeks. I did notice he was getting weaker and his weight was going down. Before any of this he weighted 200lbs, and 2 weeks ago he weighted 186
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hello, Hank,
I met you last year at Bevs' white elephant party. I was the obnoxious one who stole the one-man-band toy from your son-in-law Doug. Perhaps some Johnny Cash to listen to would help pass the time for you.
Marianne
Hey, Beverly, you are not alone. I'm trying to collect together stroke/aphasia caregiver blogs on my own blog (davescaregiver.blogspot.com), in an effort to form our own support group online. My own husband had a stroke in July of 2005, at the ripe old age of 42. I was pregnant at the time, too, and I remember jumping online to a spam-filled "support" group and asking if this was just a bad nightmare and that I needed someone to tell me that things would get better and please tell me that I am not alone...
Anyhow, feel free to come check us out, and I'd be happy to add your blog to the list, if it is ok with you.
Post a Comment