Back Home at Last

Great news! My Dad came home on Friday after 2 months in the hospital. Needless to say, he is so happy to be home. There will be a caregiver staying at my parent's home every night to help out, and there will be rehabilitation specialists making house calls throughout the week for therapy. My Dad still has a little ways to go before he can be physically independent. With minor assistance, he can walk with a walker, and feed himself.

And I am so happy that my Mom won't have to spend her days at the hospital, but rather at home with the man she loves. We've seen enough of hospitals for a long while.

Kayla and Matthew got to see Grandpa for the first time in months this weekend, and it made their day. They have really missed him, and have been so concerned about him.

Kayla's Birthday - a little late

So, our little Kayla girl turned three over 7 weeks ago, but family events being what they were over Fourth of July weekend (my Dad's aneurysm on July 3rd), I didn't get around to posting about it. Her birthday certainly is more than worthy of earning a post in our family blog, so here it is...better late than never.

We first celebrated Kayla's birthday at her daycare and brought rainbow cupcakes with rainbow frosting to give all the kids a good sugar high before their moms and dads came to pick them up. Matthew and Kayla helped to make the cupcakes, and thoroughly enjoyed licking the beaters (who doesn't?).

Next we celebrated Kayla's birthday with a small impromptu gathering at our home. She opened presents from family, and we had my mom, my Aunt Carol, and Andrew's mom Janet there with us to make the day special for Kayla. One of her favorite presents that night was a beautiful Tinker Bell costume complete with sparkly light-up shoes, fairy wings and a magic wand.

Our final celebration for Kayla was a party at a neighborhood park. She had three "requirements" for her party...a pinata, her two bff's from daycare, and a Tinkerbell cake. I stayed up until midnight making that cake, but it was fun and turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Here is Kayla with her two best friends - Callie and Sharna.

The next two pics are of Kayla pulling a pinata string, and opening her presents sitting next to my sister's kids (Marie-left, and Emma-right)

So, even though it was one of the most difficult, most emotional weekends of my life with my Dad's aneurysm, we managed to give Kayla the celebrations she deserved. I'm so proud of the beautiful and sweet little girl she is. And even though her hands often seem possessed and can't stop touching things, and her hearing seems to be rather selective for such a young girl, her antics make us laugh and her love make our hearts melt. Happy Birthday sweetheart!

Football is coming...

Just a quick update to let people know that my Dad is back at the medical rehabilitation center as of Friday, and things are going very well. He is on blood thinners to dissolve the clots in his body, and that seems to have helped with the confusion and speech. He is getting a little stronger and every day brings him one step closer to going home. So far so good.

On another note, we are gearing up for school to start for both Matthew (Kindergarten) and Andrew (teaching and coaching). I must say that I am really excited for Matthew to start at our local school because I am looking forward to meeting more people in the neighborhood. Matthew is a little anxious about meeting new people and what to expect of Kindergarten in general.

Football is about to start and is heading at us like a freight train. This begins the most hectic and stressful time of year for the Welsh family, as Andrew takes on a 70 hour work week, and my life resembles that of a single mom. I am not looking forward to it, but I know that we will get through it as we always do.

Matthew has started a fall soccer league and is so excited about it. Unfortunately, the coach thinks that kids under 6 need two practices a week, so that just adds more stuff to our already busy lives.

I have given up my beloved dance lessons for the fall, as it doesn't work with our new schedule, but I've picked up another hobby -- adult gymnastics class. I know, crazy, huh? But, I'm totally excited about doing some gymnastics again.

That's all for now!

A major setback...

My Dad was transferred last week to a medical rehabilitation center for physical and occupational therapy. We were so excited that he was moving on and were sure that with the aggressive therapy there he would be back on his feet in no time. He has continued to have some slurring of speech and confusion, which we all figured was likely still due to the drugs that he had been given for such a lengthy period of time during his ICU stay. The new doctors and nurses, however, wanted to run some tests to determine if anything else was going on.

They performed a CT scan, MRI, and Doppler of my Dad's head and neck this weekend and found some disturbing things. He has a clot in his lung, and I think 3 clots in his brain that have formed recently (within the last 3-4 days or so). So, he was taken back to the ER yesterday afternoon, and was placed back into ICU last night. They have started him on blood thinning medication to dissolve the clots, but this carries with it significant risk for internal bleeding (following his recent surgery). We will be walking a fine line for a while. It is risky to do nothing, but also risky to give the blood thinner, as well.

The good news is that they may have found an issue that could have reared its ugly head in a fatal way in a matter of days. The bad news is that we have taken a major step backward and are back in the ICU for an undetermined number of days. These setbacks really take their toll on the whole family. The range of emotions we've experienced over the last month have been just exhausting.

Dad is Out of ICU

It's true...after 24 days he was moved out of the ICU today and into another room in the hospital!

He has been making tremendous progress this week. All of the "tubes" are out of his body (catheter and chest tube were the last to go yesterday and today). He is eating food, talking, and working hard with physical therapy. His mental state is very clear now, and he certainly hasn't lost his sense of humor.

The challenge now is to get him physically stronger. He can't quite feed himself yet, stand, or sit in a chair on his own. So, he needs a great deal of rehabilitation to be physically independent. The doctors would like to see him transferred soon to an inpatient medical rehabilitation center near the hospital where he would work aggressively with physical therapy 3-5 hours per day.

Needless to say, we are thrilled with the progress and we hope it keeps going in this positive direction.

Update on My Dad

Well I am happy to report that my Dad is doing much better this week.

He was finally (FINALLY) extubated on Tuesday morning after 17 days on the ventilator. He can talk, and they have evaluated his swallowing and OK'd him today to start eating hospital food. Not sure if that is a blessing or not :-)

He is no longer sedated and no longer on any pain meds, but we are starting to see the effects that prolonged use of these drugs has taken. It appears that Dad is suffering from something called ICU Psychosis or ICU Syndrome. Basically, he is unable to separate fantasy from reality (delusional), and is hallucinating. He says that he has some "very strange"memories of the time he has spent in ICU, and many of them may not be real. This is apparently fairly common in people that have been sedated for long periods of time in the ICU, and it should go away completely when he leaves ICU.

Yesterday he was agitated, and was talking about not living much longer. That made for a tough and sad day for all of us. Today he was, well...amusing. I will protect him from any embarrassment, but, for example, he seems to have an intense craving for fruit (mangoes and grapes especially), and says that his water is not water, but it tastes delicious. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next several days to weeks.

The physical therapy team also started working on the goal of getting him to stand up and get out of bed. You can imagine that we are so excited to see such major steps taken this week (no pun intended).

Laundry Countertop

This weekend we finally completed a project I've been wanting to do for a long time - putting a countertop over our front-loading washer and dryer in the laundry room. The project took a little thought because we didn't want a permanent countertop due to the fact that the shut-off valves would be underneath it. Our washer/dryer are also super deep, and it was going to be tough to find something that would cover them. But, in the end we installed a preformed laminate countertop that rests on 2x4's, and we're happy with the result. No more missing socks behind the dryer - hooray! The before and after pics are below.

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Worst Date Night Ever

Andrew and I had tickets last night to go see Blues Traveler and Big Head Todd at the Paul Mason winery up in the mountains nearby. Great music that was sure to bring back college memories, good wine, and a beautiful warm evening in the mountains - what could be better? We had been waiting for this night for months!! My niece Hilary was coming over to babysit and the kids were super excited.

But alas, 5 minutes before Hilary arrived Matthew dives for a ball in the family room and hits his head (hard) on the coffee table. I saw it happen and thought, "ouch, that one is going to hurt!" Matthew immediately started crying and held his head, and I rushed over to comfort him. He moved his hand and there was blood all over his hand, and streaming down his face. Well, there goes date night...

Andrew and I drove Matthew off to the emergency room. We headed to the same hospital that my dad is at, thinking maybe we could squeeze in a visit while we were there. The waiting room at the ER was packed, of course. We waited for an hour to see the triage nurse. She showed Matthew a chart that had pictures ranging from a very happy face to a crying face, and asked him to point to the one that showed how he was feeling. He chose the happiest face on the chart (the kid was excited to be out of the waiting room!), which bought us another hour in the waiting room. Note to self: teach Matthew the finer points of triage.

We finally get back to an ER room two hours after arriving, and they put numbing gel on the gash in his head. It had finally stopped bleeding, and was just oozing a bit at this point. We wait for another 45 minutes for the doctor to be available to put four stitches in his head. We finally got home at 10:30 at night, without having eaten any dinner. Needless to say, we were all tired and a wee bit cranky.

I'm starting to feel like fate is just not smiling down on me these days. Do I dare ask "what's next?" But, our little Frankenstein is doing just fine. We're watching him for signs of concussion and we've been teasing him about having a scar to match Harry Potter. Poor kid, and poor us for having the worst date night ever.

Update on My Dad

My Dad is still in Intensive Care. He is doing remarkably well, all things considered, and he continues to improve a little bit each day. The recovery is just going to be very long (months), but at least he is heading in the right direction.

We are 11 days post-op, and they still have him on a ventilator. They wanted to take the tubes out days ago, but he developed pneumonia in both lungs, and they had to wait for that to clear up. They are again weaning him off the vent today in the hopes of extubating this afternoon or tomorrow morning. This will be a big step with his condition, and we are all a bit scared and anxious for it.

Dan has been awake and, while not able to talk with the tubes in, he is asking questions and understands everything. It takes about 30 minutes to figure out what he is asking for with pictures, and pointing to letters on paper, and only about 5 seconds to answer him. Needless to say, we are all eager for the tubes to be out. He remembers everything up to the aneurysm, but the post-surgery time frame is a little fuzzy for him (due to heavy sedatives and painkillers). They are no longer concerned about any neurological changes that could have occurred during the surgery, which is another miracle in itself.

So, things are going well, and we are so thankful to all of you for your thoughts and prayers. What a tremendous blessing it is to have such wonderful friends and family!

A very rough weekend

Fourth of July weekend was going to be very busy for our family. We had Kayla's birthday to celebrate, and barbecues to attend, and my brother was going to start the TransPac race (a sailboat race from LA to Hawaii) down in San Diego.

But life threw us a curve ball...

Friday night my dad was rushed to the hospital with an aortic aneurysm. Before rupturing, it dissected the arteries in his body from his neck down to his legs. This is a catastrophic event that results in death more than 90% of the time. He had emergency surgery that night, and sometime early Saturday morning we were told there was nothing more that could be done. They would transfer him to ICU and we would probably have an hour or two to say our goodbyes.

But somehow, we have been blessed with a miracle, and he is still with us. He is improving a little bit every day, and while the long term prognosis is still very uncertain, we now have hope where we had none before.

Please pray for our family and for my Dad. We have already seen a few miracles already, but I'm hoping that we will be granted a couple more to get through the next few critical milestones of recovery. Thanks for all of your love and support. It means the world to us.