Update on Papaw...

First of all, I want to say thanks to my friend, Pep, for her kind words. ***hugs*** to Pep!

I went to see Papaw last night. When I said his speech had been "mildly" affected, I hadn't seen him yet. His speech has been severly affected! He was trying so hard to talk to us last night, but I could only understand about 1 word out of every 10. But, being Papaw, I understood "cross", "Lord", and "song". He has a mild case of Parkinsons and it was so hard to sit there watching him shake and trying to talk to us. All I could do was cry. Please continue to pray for him.

Mamaw did say that the neurologist came in and said that the stroke had been on the right side of the brain, but, there's no bleed in the brain and no swelling...PRAISE THE LORD! They're bringing in all kinds of therapists today to start working with him. That should thrill him because he was so sleepy yesterday that he couldn't stay awake more than five minutes or so.

I got really annoyed at the nurse, and should have reported him. Papaw had fallen yesterday morning, I guess as he was having the stroke. He had a pretty good gash on his arm. The hospital had put a "tagaderm" (sp?) on him. The tagaderm was nothing more than a clear tape kind of thing. There was nothing in there to soak up the blood. Anyway, by the time I got there, his arm had continued to bleed underneath that thing until it was leaking out on his sheet, gown, etc. My cousin, Andy, pointed it out to the nurse and he started all this crap about how that's how it's supposed to be...yadda, yadda, yadda (took the guy 20 minutes to get in there and stop a beeping IV!). Andy told him (and if he hadn't, I was going to), "we want that cleaned and changed". As I was leaving, they were getting ready to clean it up. ARGH!!!!

I'm going back to visit tonight. I hope he's doing better.