Sunday, July 12, 2009
Day Six: on ward Q5
Simon had another chatty day, he was able to select a preferred CD from a stack of six, and listened to that for about a minute. I read to him for a while, having found a book in our bathroom left open on the page where he left it, so I started from a few pages back from there. I am not sure that he listened to the story, but seems to like the sounds of words. I tried to find talking books, and today could only come up with John Le Carre, A Most Wanted Man, I will try him on this later in the week. Shorter stories would probably be better, wonder if there are any Roald Dahl's on recording. Our local library has stacks of talking books so I will try to get in there tomorrow. He refused an offer to watch TV, I don't blame him, Sunday afternoon TV in Oz is notoriously bad.Most promising, he was able to nod agreement sometimes, and managed to tell me that he was desperate for a hot shower by pointing at the door repeatedly. He cannot be moved enough for a shower yet, but I washed him and cooled him down. He has his left hand tied down to the bed because he has pulled out three nasal gastric tubes, and they are very uncomfortable to replace. I couldn't find a stress ball, but came up with a miniature squashy AFL ball (like a rugby ball), this seems to be a good fit for his right hand. We have discovered that he is very allergic to elastoplast. His BP is better than it was, and his breathing sounds a lot better. Losing weight by the day, so I am buying things in two sizes. Hopefully they will have him in PJs soon.Shirley is still jet-lagged having spent 3 days travelling. However, she did our ironing today and said she enjoyed it. Simon and I smiled about that - ironing is the worst job in our house. Skippy is behaving strangely, he seems to think that Simon is locked in the shed. I have opened the shed regularly for him to inspect it. He sits on the sun-lounger outside waiting for Simon to appear.Expect by now many of you will be en route from Greece, or off on your summer vacations. Safe journeys all.Marian x
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Thanks for the update Marian. Word is working it's way around the UK thanks to Dave Nicholson forwarding it to me. It sounds like some good progress is being made and I hope that you and Shirley are holding up ok.
ReplyDeleteThe consensus here was "Oh Shit", Sandra, Mark and myself send our love and hope all goes well.
Hi Marian, wonderful to hear how his communication is coming on. Great idea to have his watch and fone. There are a few audio books on his hard drive, which though he has hard before (actually, because he has heard before) might be easy to settle through. I think they are in D;\from asher\audiobooks.
ReplyDeleteMich n me are just back in Sussex, so do give me a call if you want to talk through transferring them to a CD, or finding them (or, of course, anything)
The finale of the ICICTE conference was the entire conference shouting our best wished to Simon, it is linked from the keynote page, and the video can be seen here:
http://www.icicte.org/Get%20Well%20Soon.mov
Do you have a laptop at the hospital?
Please ive Mitch and my love to Shirl
xx
asher
I'm so glad to hear that Simon is making steady progress and thank you for taking the time to share this blog. I'm sure that soon he will begin to be able to contribute to it as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm really looking forward to that...
I am searching for computer aided stuff for Simon. Some sort of touch screen device, maybe with artificial voice. It occurred to me that with all you computer bods out there, you might be able to come up with something.
ReplyDeleteMarian
This is such good news and I don't blame him for pulling out the nasal tube it must be horrible! So pleased that he can eat and that he is getting such good care. Tt's great that you are taking the trouble to do this blog too. You must be frazzled at the end of the day. Don't trust him with too many nurses!
ReplyDeleteBest Wishes
David