Sorry it has been since the end of March since my last update, but Dad has been keeping us busy.  His health has not been too good lately and is currently in the hospital. 

He has been having congestive heart failure (CHF) which has landed him 3 trips to the hospital.  One was May 4 and he had pneumonia and blood clots in his lung with that visit.  Then on May 30 he was back again with the CHF.  And of course, he went back in the hospital on July 8th with CHF and is still there. 

This last bout has been pretty bad.  He is also growing some e. coli in his bladder and that is really causing problems.  It is a drug resistant infection and they put him on an antibiotic called levaquin and that has worked in the past, but not this time.  They changed it to vancomyacin on Fri night and he is responding to that one.  He got pretty bad on fri and thought that he may have septic shock, but the work up was negative.  For a few days he was pretty unresponsive and wouldn't really wake up.  But within 24 hours of the vancomyacin, he was much more awake and responding to you.  Yesterday he was awake for about 3.5 hours straight and he was out of bed and sitting in the chair.  The physical therapist had him doing some leg exercises and he was cooperating with her.  So hopefully he is on the way to recovery.

Joan has come to visit for 2 1/2 weeks.  She got here on Thurs evening the 6th.  The airline has lost her luggage and she has been without for the past 10 days.  We feel pretty hopeless that they will find the luggage at this point.  She has had to go out and buy some clothes and shoes.  She is borrowing some from Anna but you have to have some of your own clothes.  It has been long enough that she has filed a claim with the airlines.  It is hard to believe that they have really lost her bag.  She had a direct flight from Atl to Houston so the bad didn't even have to change planes.  It does seem that most of the time Joan comes it involves a trip to the hospital. 

Glad Joan is here though, it has made a world of difference with Dad in the hospital.  But it is always great for her to be here anyway.  We have moved our nursing shifts to the hospital so that Dad is not alone and the ladies will not find other jobs.  Dad doesn't fair well in the hospital and the hospital staff tend to want to put him in restraints when he is there because he tries to get out of bed unattended and then he tries to get home.  So at least with our nurses there he is not in restraints and he does much better and we don't have him with a broken hip.

Not much else is going on here.  Hospital trip after hospital trip (this makes the 5th since Feb 20).  He has never gotten back up to the health he was in before Mom died. Not sure if he will ever be that good again, but I sure do hope we can get him better.  He has lost a bunch of weight and is down to about 140lbs.  He is way too skinny looking. 

Oh, and the other thing is that sometime since he go to the hospital this past week, he has gotten a HUGE bruise on his right side that goes from his hip all the way up to his shoulder, then down the arm to the elbow (with him being on Coumadin, a small bruise can get very large quickly).  We think that he got bumped or fell when he was taken from the ER to the x-ray department when he first arrived.  He has been with one of us the entire time and that was the only time that he was not within our sight.  The bruise is plumb purple and it is painful to him when he is moved or you touch it.  The doctor has seen it and ordered an ultrasound of the area and found that it is a superficial bruise and not something that is deep within him.  At least that was good news. 

Hope all is good with all of you. 

Love and hugs,  Mary, Anna, Joan and The Birds.