It has been a good weekend. My brother came to visit and he has been an absolute angel. All weekend he's been happy and helpful and it's really been a blessing for us to have him around. Yesterday he cut the ripest of onions for me and peeled a big bowl of potatoes too. It's nice to have such a helpful person around. It's been nice for all of us actually. He's rubbed mom's sore feet and has taken dad on walks in the neighborhood, and he's helped me do a few little odd jobs that I needed help with around the house...mostly the cutting stuff I mentioned earlier. He's helped distract mom from her painful legs. He's fun to listen to so he's helped us to be distracted from the less pleasant stuff. Overall, it's been a wonderful visit. I hope I can keep this weekend in my memories of good times. It was a good time with a very good brother...even if he teases me sometimes or drives me nuts even. :)
Mom, as you can tell, is home from the hospital. She's been home a few days. My sister Julie brought her home on Friday I think. Mom is still in a lot of pain and she needs to sleep a lot to handle the pain in her leg. The swelling seems to have gone down. They wrapped her legs to force the blood to go back up the leg instead of pooling at her feet. It looks better in terms of swelling, but it still has a long way to go before it is better. The hardest part is the pain. She's a touch chick I tell ya. She tries to manage the pain herself instead of taking pain medication most of the time, but every once in awhile she decides that she needs the medicine. Thankfully the medicine isn't making her sick like it was in the hospital. Prescriptions are awfully expensive though. Shesh! It's a good thing they have insurance is all I can say.
Mom and dad are moving around the house very easily. Dad can handle the bathtub and the stairs and only needs help with a few things. I wouldn't say he's made a full recovery in the complete sense, but he's pretty close. He has cognitive and physical limitations, but overall he can do a lot and we're pretty lucky and blessed. His blood sugar levels have been perfect everyday too, which makes all of us very happy. Just after I was diagnosed with cancer, he was diagnosed with diabetes by the way. I don't know if I've mentioned that before. He's doing really well. He only eats what he's supposed to, unless peanut butter is around. Ha, ha! He has a hard time saying no to that. We don't have any at home now so that helps.
Since mom and dad are more limited in what they can do physically, I've been doing more around the house. It's a blessing for me in an odd sort of way. I find that I'm doing the shopping and the cooking and the cleaning and all of the stuff that mom used to do. I feel good inside when I'm helping and I feel like it's a blessing to me. Mom and dad keep thanking me too and that makes me feel pretty neat as well. So, I guess I'm growing up. I used to help out prior to the health issues...it's just that I'm doing pretty much everything now...and it's just different is all. I feel great that I can help and serve my parents right now. I feel a really nice warm feeling in my heart and soul that just makes all of the extra effort feel very worthwhile. It won't be forever situation. It's just for awhile, but I'm okay with doing more...for however long it takes.
Dad's speech and occupational therapy has resumed. He was receiving it in Bluffdale and they transferred his information to someone and now someone comes here. He'll continue to receive speech and occupational therapy. I don't know how long he'll be doing it. I guess until they see that he's reached his max in terms of growth.
The sisters in our church, the Relief Society, brought us the most delicious dinner the other day too. Generally we don't like to be served like this. We're an independent family and we try to take care of ourselves. Anyways, it's been nice to be served in this way by our ward. In addition to dinner, there have been some men from the ward that have been coming to take dad on walks too. My dad loves walks and so he's been really happy about how these men have done this for him. He's a strong walker too. Some of the men have said so and they'll say things like how my dad could have walked a lot longer, but THEY were tired and needed to stop. That gave all of us here a good laugh and dad really loved it. We're all pretty happy around here. Mom rests a lot, dad watches non-stop Western shows on TV, and we all say how thankful we are to be home....especially mom. She says it every day. I guess there really is no place like home.
