Sharing the trial and error learned lessons of a MS spouse caregiver / carer about family, home care, and transition to the care facility era from 23 years of living with Multiple Sclerosis as a family ... a ‘warts and all’ picture of living with MS.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Update about updates
Still Megan posting, but dad wanted to let you all know that small updates will be posted periodically at his facebook page until he can get to a full screen computer and post these himself.
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
Caregivers Make the Worst Caregivees
First thing's first, this is not Patrick writing any of this! I asked my father for permission to update his blogs for him while he's temporarily unable to.
As regular readers are aware, he's been going through some aggressive chemotherapy for his lung cancer. After the fifth round he managed to catch pneumonia from somewhere, and had to be taken to the hospital when he was too weak to lift himself out of a chair. Something like that is scary enough for a regular person, but maybe more so for a long time caregiver.
It was a rough couple of days, but the antibiotics finally began working and his body is still fighting off the infection now, on top of the chemo and the cancer. The main concern is that he has become very weak, and needs help doing nearly everything.
He's said since the start that parts of cancer and chemo have helped him better understand parts of my mom's disease, and I can only imagine that's even more true now. But I wouldn't want to speculate too much and end up stealing away a future post my dad would prefer to make himself!
When he'll be able to do that is up in the air. The hospital wants to discharge him to a facility equipped to handle inpatient physical therapy with the goal of returning home. And my mom's care facility happens to have such facilities!
Now, whether or not our insurance will approve of that has yet to be seen, and whether it would even be the best fit for the kind of physical therapy he needs, I have to admit my fingers are crossed for him to spend a little vacation time there. Potentially being able to see my mom daily again could be interesting for the both of them.
I promise to read all comments to him while he's out of action, spambots included, so don't be shy.
-Megan
As regular readers are aware, he's been going through some aggressive chemotherapy for his lung cancer. After the fifth round he managed to catch pneumonia from somewhere, and had to be taken to the hospital when he was too weak to lift himself out of a chair. Something like that is scary enough for a regular person, but maybe more so for a long time caregiver.
It was a rough couple of days, but the antibiotics finally began working and his body is still fighting off the infection now, on top of the chemo and the cancer. The main concern is that he has become very weak, and needs help doing nearly everything.
He's said since the start that parts of cancer and chemo have helped him better understand parts of my mom's disease, and I can only imagine that's even more true now. But I wouldn't want to speculate too much and end up stealing away a future post my dad would prefer to make himself!
When he'll be able to do that is up in the air. The hospital wants to discharge him to a facility equipped to handle inpatient physical therapy with the goal of returning home. And my mom's care facility happens to have such facilities!
Now, whether or not our insurance will approve of that has yet to be seen, and whether it would even be the best fit for the kind of physical therapy he needs, I have to admit my fingers are crossed for him to spend a little vacation time there. Potentially being able to see my mom daily again could be interesting for the both of them.
I promise to read all comments to him while he's out of action, spambots included, so don't be shy.
-Megan
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