Hey Y'all,

All is well down here in FL.  I spoke with the nurses yesterday and they were a bit encouraging.  Melanie, the occupational therapist, said she was amazed that Mom didn't slide back too much with her Occ therapy after this past stroke.  She said she is physicallly not as good as she was before the last stroke, but she didn't loose too much with her fine motor skills and is excited that she can still feed herself.  Mom is still having a bit of a time trying to get the food on the spoon and is having some tremors and the food falls off, but as Melanie says, she has a great appatiate and is trying to eat.

Mom can't really sit up very well at this point.  She lost alot of the muscle tone it takes to keep herself upright.  She has done alot of sleeping after the last stroke and that has made those muscles weak again.  They are sitting her in a specialized recliner that is more a recliner than a wheelchair.  Mom seems not to be using (i.e. propping herself up) with her right arm.  Before, she was applying some pressure on the right side and that was holding her up some on the right side.

They have stopped her physical therapy and I waiting to talk to the MD to find out why they have totally stopped.  I think she can do a few minutes a day to keep up her muscle tone.  Melanie is still doing her streching excersise to keep up some of the tone.

I made her some pictures of the family with our names on the pages and then I laminated them.  She likes to look at them and I also made some that have a few words like, yes, no, stop, water, sick, hungry and she likes to look at them.

Kuddos to Anna.  She worked real hard with Dad to keep him from poking at Mom and he really didn't do that at all yesterday!!!  We were there 3 hours and only once did she swat at him, when he was holding her hand.  She wanted to look at the pictures and he had her hand.  Yea Anna!!  We will see if that was a fluke yesterday, or he has finally clued in that she doesn't want him to poke at her.

Dad has been sleeping well during the night since I got here.  That is good.  Dotty says he looks a bit more rested.  I think he gets out of sync sometimes and needs to get readjusted to everyones different routine when our shift changes.

I got Dad new blades in his razor and got him all shaved up.  And I got him one of those "personal groomers" that you see advertized on TV.  It looks like a stick and it majically makes hair disappear.  It really works to get those longer hairs that he misses when he shaves.  I sat him in his recliner and plugged in the electric razor and went after him, and he liked it.  So we got a good shave yesterday.

Not much else going on here.  I may try to juice some of the oranges this week.  It is a bit of work, but the juice is good.  The tree is loaded and you really hate to see them wasted.  The last time I was here, I got about 2.5 gals made.  I guess it was about 200 or so oranges.  It filled the kitchen trash bag with the skins.  Trash day is this am, so I missed the boat to get rid of them for this week's trash. Oh, well, Joan can take it next week.

When I spoke with the nurse, and told her that we would like to take Mom to Houston the first week in March, she thought that was doable, but we have to get the Dr. to release her.  She is pretty stable with her meds now.  She is taking dilantin for the seizures and they had to get that and the coumadin stable.  The dilantin makes the coumadin work better, so they have to readjust.

We are going to move them to Tx via a RV.  Mom can't sit up for longer than a few hours (3) at this time and when I came here the other day, it was about 8 to 9 hours from when I left home to when I got here.  So we are looking at RV rentals.  We have to wait a bit to rent one in Houston.  We have this thing called a Rodeo.  Right before the rodeo, they have all these trail rides where people get on horses and ride the different trails to Houston.  Some are longer than others and some are short.  They all start at different times then they meet up in Memorial Park and have a big party and ho-down, then a rodeo parade.  Well, all the RV's are rented out for the last week in Feb.  I guess the RV is the covered wagon of the 2000's.  Gotta keep the urban cowboys comfey when they travel. 

I will keep you up to date on how stuff is going here.

Love to all,

Mary and Ed