Working hard….

June 10, 2016

Den has a full day scheduled. First up is PT with Elaine. She put him through his normal work out and then had Den do a 6 minute walk (with his walker). She had Den walk a little without his walker to see how stable he was becoming. She told him that he could move to his cane at his own discretion. But she suggested keeping the walker when out side of the house for now, just to give Den some extra support both physically and mentally.

The next scheduled appointment was with the home health care lab tech. They were supposed to come and do a blood draw at 10AM, but never showed up. So I called over to the outpatient clinic to see if they had found the order for Den’s blood work. I was told that there was no order on file at this time. So I called the LVAD team, again. This time they faxed the order to the clinic and to me. This way I would have a copy of the order in my hand when we went into the clinic. No more excuses for not getting the blood draw and labs processed.

Later in the afternoon, I got a call from Den’s ophthalmologist. We were still trying to get Den’s cataract surgery scheduled. And now we had the extra complication of the LVAD. You see, most hospitals and outpatient centers won’t work with LVAD patients. They are not trained to handle them and won’t work with them at all. We were told that this again when we tried to schedule at the 3 place the doctor uses for cataract surgeries. But there was one more that they were waiting for an answer from…so we just crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.

June 11, 2016

Today is Den’s granddaughter’s dance recital. The family has been nice enough to invite Em and myself to attend also. They really had no choice, since none of them have been educated in how to care for Den and his LVAD. So off to Joliet we go. The recital was very nice and all the kids were cute and talented. I got Den to his seat with the wheelchair and the ushers helped a lot. They even took the wheelchair to the back of the theater for the performance and returned it to Den’s row when the show was over. Den surprised everyone by using his cane at the restaurant to get to the table. It was a very nice meal and everyone seemed to have a nice time. But by the time we were done, Den was exhausted. He asked if I would get the wheelchair to get him out of the restaurant. I knew he had done a lot of physical exertion that day and was not about to push him. I think Den slept most of the way home. I could see on his face that he was totally wiped out from the day when we got home.