Saturday, January 26, 2008

saturday 1/26/08 update

I changed the subject line this time because I kept typing in the wrong day, although I did have the right date. I still can’t get it right. I hope it didn’t confuse anyone too much. So this is the third installment with updates about my father. All great stories have been told in trilogy’s. So like George Lucas, I will wrap it up in this third email. However, you never know, there may be more to come.

Today, Saturday, Dad was in great spirits. He had been up and eating real food. They got him out of bed and into the chair in his room. This was partially because they wanted to get him up a little today and partially to prepare him to move to his room and out of ICU. That would take quite longer than expected. We arrived to the hospital just before noon. He had some other visitors come by from the church. We ate lunch in the café’ and found the waiting room had been freshened with new magazines. We decided since he was still in ICU that we were no longer going to abide by the 3 in the room at a time. Today we took in 4. At one point we even had seven. But Susan, Tonya and I sat with him until dinner. He called at about 9:30pm and said that they had just moved him into his room on the sixth floor.

Dad is feeling great, sitting up and laughing. He is happy watching college basketball and reading his woodworking magazines. I think the most frustrating thing will be not being able to drive his couple of month old Rav4. He has mentioned that quite a bit recently. He is taking medicine now to prevent seizures. He had been having petite mal seizures from the pressure of the tumor. He won’t be allowed to drive again until those have completely subsided. He will begin radiation and chemotherapy in 2 weeks. The radiation will last for 6 weeks. He will go in 5 days a week at 10 minutes at a time. His church members are beginning to sign up to drive him to and from treatment, allowing Susan to return to work. The chemo will begin at the same time. It will be the oral type so the doctor is expecting that he won’t be sick from it.

If everything goes as well as it has, Dad should return home on Sunday. I know he is excited about that and his dog will be too.

Again, thank you for your support, encouragement and support. Please continue to keep my father in your prayers. While the crisis period is over, the fight is not. The battle will go on. It’s been a long weekend, stressful at times, but I don’t think it could have gone any better than it has. Dad’s recovery has been better that we could have ever have hoped for.

God’s grace is abundant.

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