Catch 22

I talked to Mom last night for the update on Dad, and he seems to have reached an impasse on his recovery! The swallowing therapist says he can have absolutely nothing by mouth until he goes to rehab, because she is convinced he is still aspirating (and says that even his best tests were borderline, but they decided just to try letting him have food -- that was the fiasco a few weeks ago). But none of the rehab places will take him as long as he requires an IV to take his medicine! The oral form of the medicine apparently can't be made to fit into the J-tube his stomach has, and there's no patch form of the medication he needs, and it can't be given by injection (too abrupt, apparently -- it needs to be more time-released). So he can't leave the hospital until he can take his medicine, and he can't take his medicine until he can leave the hospital. What are we to do?

Mom is hoping to get more details from the GI doctor next time she sees one, and she and Dr. Hiatt are trying to come up with other solutions. But for the moment Dad is stuck in a holding pattern.

Mom did get Dad a lollipop for Valentine's Day, but it was too big, so the next day she brought him a popsicle, with reluctant approval from the medical staff. I wonder if there's a popsicle form of his medicine? ;)

Meanwhile, Dad's medical orders say he is supposed to be receiving daily attention from a physical therapist. But Mom says they're lucky if they see one every other day; usually it's more like every three or four days. She quizzed the PT yesterday on why they weren't there, and Mom was told they simply don't have enough staff. Mom does what exercises she can with him, and she is getting very insistent that the nurses move him into a chair every day (even though he hates it, because it's so painful with his bedsore, and so tiring), but Mom is no substitute for full-fledged therapy.

At this point we need a miracle! A priest with a good track record has stopped by a number of times -- he once read the 23rd Psalm to a 9-year-old heart attack patient (an infection run amok) who was expected to be very limited in his activity for six to nine months, and a week later he was home and back to a normal life! And more recently a patient came in for emergency octuple (yes, that's 8-way) bypass surgery and was not expected to survive, and after a blessing and the psalm from this priest he also recovered dramatically. So yesterday the priest read the 23rd Psalm for Dad. (We don't know how many times he's read this same psalm without effect, says the skeptic in me, but we cling to what hope we can!) Please keep praying for Dad, that something will change for the better soon!