Dad’s all settled in with his new pacemaker. He’s started to talk about being tired of being in the hospital, and wanting to go home. It’s a good sign, but of course we’ll need to stick around for a few more days to make sure everything is okay before we can go home. Tomorrow, he’ll likely move from the ICU to the general hospital floor, provided nothing goes wrong in the night, and the general floor has room for him. We’re making plans to ensure he gets some tasty food, and entertainment.
To that end, if anyone in the Seattle area would like to drop by tomorrow, that’d probably go over quite well. Bruce and Rudy visited today, and that was great. If you’d like to visit, give us a call, and we’ll make it happen.
We had some good talks with the physical therapy folks about what sort of schedule to follow with exercise when we’re home. It’s disappointingly slow for quite some time, but there are good reasons for all of it. The two primary concerns are the healing of the sternum (which they had to break to do the surgery), and the security of the pacemaker wires. Because of that, he’s not to lift heavy loads, or raise his arms above his shoulders for several months. We’ll be going for walks every day, working up to a 45-minute walk each day. These walks are to include mostly flat terrain, which will probably entail some driving, since 45 minutes of walking circles around the house would get pretty boring.
I apologize for the lack of a photo, but I’ve got nothing right now. I’ll make up for it tomorrow. :-)
Horray for good food and and a zen attitude for recovery. It all happens the same way never fast enough! Good physical therpy folks are genius. We are all with you…
Bob