Am back from visiting Joe at Western Baptist, 5th floor, Room 577. Found out that's the stroke floor.
He is doing extremely well today. The draw in his mouth is gone; most of the slur in his voice is gone. He was lying in his bed asleep with his untouched, uncovered, stone cold lunch in front of him. I couldn't wake him so just sat down in a chair. In a bit a nurse came in to check him and managed to wake him up. He was delighted to see me and wanted to know why I didn't visit yesterday. Sigh.
After the nurse left, he drank all of the soda I'd brought him and started on eating the roast beef off the roast beef sandwich I'd brought. A different nurse came in and about had a fit because the speech therapist had said he had trouble swallowing. I just shrugged and told her he was on his 2nd cola (mine) and scarfing down roast beef and tomato and having no problem.
I sat with him for about an hour. He made no attempt to try to get up. He did want me to go into the next room and get his stuff. He couldn't process he was in the hospital as opposed to the nursing home. Even after I told him 5 times. He couldn't process he'd fainted and had a mild stroke yesterday. Kept asking me why on earth he was there and life was miserable and he wanted to go home. He did manage to remember I'd gone somewhere for a marriage but had no idea who or where.
He asked about Mama, and I got myself in a bit of trouble over that. I didn't want to tell him she's not processing he's gone, so I told him she was a little worried about him. That upset him because he doesn't want her worrying about anything. Can't win for losing, Jola Gayle.
I went by the other nursing home and picked his stuff up from there. In the end, he was missing 3 pairs of khaki pants, a bottle of Old Spice, a can of deodorant and his glasses. I left all the clothes they'd labeled as his that really weren't his in the closet. We can do without the Old Spice and deodorant, but I have to say I want reimbursement for his pants and glasses. Damn it. Now I have to make an appointment for him and take him to get new glasses. Not that he didn't need new ones anyway, but he can't see anything until then.
I knew not to take anything valuable to the nursing home, but seriously, at $269 a day, I did expect a staff capable of labeling patients' clothes and not losing their glasses. They tried to blame the glasses on both him laying them down somewhere and some other wandering klepto ladies. He's always been pretty good about not taking his glasses off except to sleep. If that's so common, a simple procedure like taking a picture and putting it in the file ALONGSIDE the list of possessions a patient checks in with should make it easy for personnel to keep up things like that. Most people don't get to that age without needing glasses, and you'd think that would be an SOP.
It was nice however to get a chance to talk to a few of nurses' assistants. They told me that in the last week, he had been adjusting well and finally allowing them to help him bathe, shower and shave. Perhaps with this last stroke he won't be such a problem as to be unplaceable in a facility.
I asked Mama today if she wanted to visit him, and she said she didn't think she could do that. Don't know what's in her mind, but we can't even get her to go out on the porch and sit outside on nice days anymore. She's become almost, if not actually, agoraphobic.
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