My Dad's Coming Home

My father's been in rehab the past few months, and is scheduled to come home today.

I know this "The Neighbor's Think We're Normal" blog tends to focus on my immediate family, but I owe a lot of the strange man I am today to the strange parents I have, and it's fitting to tell you a little about my dad.

He suffers from chronic stubbornness.  The doctor says it's inoperable, and it may eventually prove terminal.  In addition he has a leaky heart valve, arthritis, diabetes, circulatory issues, blood pressure problems, balance issues, and fairly significant hearing loss.  He's eighty-nine years old and had a nasty infection this past summer and had a really, really bad couple of weeks.  We honestly thought we were going to lose him and from the doctor's perspective he had a pretty close call.

He's doing hugely better, but the stubbornness remains, alas, unabated.  He's spent the past several weeks in a very competent therapeutic rehabilitation center and has been, by all accounts, charming the socks off of nurses, administrators, therapists, and staff.  He's good at that.  But he's been wanting to go back home and I have mixed feelings about this myself..  He lives with my older brother who pretty much serves as full-time caregiver (my mom's in an assisted living facility) and he probably ought to be in some sort of facility himself, but he doesn't want to go.  And so far, as long as he and my brother can make this work, it seems to be going okay.

I'm very, very happy he's still around.  I've had a couple of delightful days with him that have felt like bonus days, and we're glad he's so much stronger and abler than he was.  The concern, of course, is that he's not going to keep up with the exercise and the behaving himself when he gets back home and will shortly wind up back in trouble.  (My brother's a great guy, but Daddy doesn't listen to him much.)  We'll have to see how it works out.

We covet your prayers.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.