Thanks everyone for your well wishes, and offers of help and support; these have meant so much to us over the past six days. We are nowhere near establishing a "new normal", but we are inching in that direction, one hour at a time.
My father is recovering really well. In fact, he is out of the Neurology Acute Care Unit (NACU), and up on the neurology ward. He was moved there last night, and I had the privilege of helping him settle into his new digs.
He is still having a hard time with thin liquids and heavily textured food, which, to those who know him, is likely one of the hardest knocks, given that my father defined the term "foodie" seventy five years before it was cool. If he focusses mightily on his left hand, he can get it to move a fraction. His left arm and leg have some range of motion, although the left side of his face is still resolutely unmovable. His speech is fairly good, and very happily, his cognitive abilities seem unimpaired. He was getting rather feisty the first few days after his stroke, because he desperately wanted to put his feet on the floor. And although his constant, single-minded demands served to underline just how helpless we all were - him to move, and us to accommodate him safely - I was relieved to see that he could still muster a healthy dose of impetuousness. Apathy isn't what you want to see in these situations. The doctors think that he is an excellent candidate for rehabilitation, and I know my father is looking forward to doing something productive with the days he finds so long.
When I compare where my father is now with how he was at approximately 8:05pm last Saturday night, I am amazed. But when I compare him now to the person he was at 8:04pm, well... that's the sad part. But we are extremely fortunate to be where we are, and we are deeply grateful these comparisons can be made at all.
In the meantime, we've had a few lovely distractions here at home. Of course, there is this guy:
The Ducklings have been a little sad, scared and confused about Opa's medical situation. Edward and I have worked hard to comfort them, and to generate feelings of optimism and acceptance, but this is hard even for adults. Malcolm, on the other hand, is his usual happy go lucky self. He is greatly looking forward to having cake this weekend for his birthday - cake being his most favourite thing ever - and we've been swimming this week, playing in puddles, rescuing worms, reading books, cuddling, grocery shopping, and all of those things that re-establish a bit of equilibrium and forward momentum in times like this. As I've said before, kids are great at moving life along.
You will likely have to "bigify" this picture to see our other sweet distractions: four baby bunnies! Above, there's one eating the clover in the grass, and two more are on the far left, nibbling on the daylily leaves. At one point, three of them were gathered around the daylily, sitting on their wee haunches and having a snack. They are supremely hard to photograph; Sprocket has done his due diligence schooling them in their "flight" reactions, so they are a little jumpy. Pun intended.
Edward and I have decided that we won't be having the open house tomorrow morning. Our apologies to all. However, we hope to see many of you over the course of the summer.
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