{"id":1488,"date":"2009-02-25T16:17:42","date_gmt":"2009-02-25T23:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=1488"},"modified":"2009-02-25T16:17:44","modified_gmt":"2009-02-25T23:17:44","slug":"update-on-dads-condition-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=1488","title":{"rendered":"Update on Dad&#8217;s Condition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure id=\"attachment_1489\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1489\" style=\"width: 267px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-1489\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?attachment_id=1489\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"1489\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?attachment_id=1489\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/img_0575.jpg?fit=800%2C897&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"800,897\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;2.8&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;Roland K Smith&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;iPhone&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;The family area at the nursing home is a nice, quiet corner on the south corner of the building. The room has a couple of couches, a small table with four chairs, a large TV, and an ancient computer in the corner. Dad prefers being in this room than in the large common room where most people sit in their chairs and sleep the day away.\\r\\rWe&#039;ve taken advantage of the family room every time we&#039;ve visited. Dad can have his lunch at the table and Nina makes lunch to bring with us so we can all eat together there. For him it&#039;s a siginficant improvement over sitting in the cafeteria with three other guys at his table who are all living in some distant place in their minds.\\r\\rThe only problem with the room is that it is far enough away from the wifi at the hospital that there&#039;s no signal there and the cell phone signal is pretty weak there as well. So, connectivity is somewhat difficult.&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1235509928&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;This image is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. All other rights reserved.&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Family Room at the Nursing Home&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Family Room at the Nursing Home\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt;The family area at the nursing home is a nice, quiet corner on the south corner of the building. The room has a couple of couches, a small table with four chairs, a large TV, and an ancient computer in the corner. Dad prefers being in this room than in the large common room where most people sit in their chairs and sleep the day away.&lt;\/p&gt;\n&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#8217;ve taken advantage of the family room every time we&amp;#8217;ve visited. Dad can have his lunch at the table and Nina makes lunch to bring with us so we can all eat together there. For him it&amp;#8217;s a siginficant improvement over sitting in the cafeteria with three other guys at his table who are all living in some distant place in their minds.&lt;\/p&gt;\n&lt;p&gt;The only problem with the room is that it is far enough away from the wifi at the hospital that there&amp;#8217;s no signal there and the cell phone signal is pretty weak there as well. So, connectivity is somewhat difficult.&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;Family Room at the Nursing Home&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/img_0575.jpg?fit=267%2C300&amp;ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/img_0575.jpg?fit=604%2C677&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1489\" title=\"Family Room at the Nursing Home\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/img_0575.jpg?resize=267%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Family Room at the Nursing Home\" width=\"267\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/img_0575.jpg?resize=267%2C300&amp;ssl=1 267w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/img_0575.jpg?resize=133%2C150&amp;ssl=1 133w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/img_0575.jpg?w=800&amp;ssl=1 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 267px) 100vw, 267px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1489\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Family Room at the Nursing Home<\/figcaption><\/figure>Nina and I spent a few hours with dad and mother at the nursing home yesterday. Dad seems to be rallying a bit and his condition continues to improve somewhat. He&#8217;s gotten also a bit ornery. He has begun to insist on going home. Unfortunately that&#8217;s not going to happen. He cannot stand up by himself and most of the time when he tries, he falls backwards into the chair (or if the chair isn&#8217;t locked down, onto the floor). He occasionally is successful in getting himself partially out of bed and then falls the rest of the way out onto the floor. Once he&#8217;s on the floor, two people are required to get him back upright. <\/p>\n<p>This is the main reason that he&#8217;s at the nursing home. Mother cannot get him upright when he falls on the floor. She doesn&#8217;t have the strength to be able to help him transition to his walker from the toilet. If he gets even slightly out of his center-of-gravity balance area, he&#8217;s on the floor. <\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, his color is back to normal. His vital signs are pretty good: blood pressure fairly constant in the 100 \/ 60 range and pulse rate in the high 70&#8217;s. His temperature is normal and his blood sugar ranges from 80 to 130, all of which are certainly very acceptable. For a while his blood pressure was continuing to decrease, but the doctor has modified his medications and the blood pressure has stabilized.<\/p>\n<p>He has very little strength in his legs, but when the physical therapist works with him and coaches him through the process of standing (all the while keeping a firm grip on him), dad can often get himself into a standing position from his wheel chair. Unaided and unguided, however, he fails every time.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s no mystery why he wants to go home. He seems to have no life anymore. There&#8217;s so much that he still wants to do. But, his body cannot keep up with his brain. Getting old sucks! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nina and I spent a few hours with dad and mother at the nursing home yesterday. Dad seems to be rallying a bit and his condition continues to improve somewhat. He&#8217;s gotten also a bit ornery. He has begun to insist on going home. Unfortunately that&#8217;s not going to happen. He cannot stand up by &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=1488\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Update on Dad&#8217;s Condition<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pnKxs-o0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}