Life Lessons

Where to begin….

I remember the morning after my Dad’s stroke on August 16, 2009 like it was yesterday. I arrived that morning on the red eye from LA to Birmingham, we didn’t know if he would even survive the night, much less months afterwards which thankfully he did.

After getting out of Surgical Intensive Care which he had been in for about 2 weeks, he was eventually allowed to spend a few weeks in one of the finest Rehab Centers for stroke victims in the world which just happened to be in Birmingham.

It was there that he began to make some gradual progress and we thought he might be one of the lucky ones and make a comeback.

He transferred to a Skilled Nursing facility and was there for about a month and kept having Urinary Tract Infections and got Pneumonia which put him in and out of the hospital several times.

My Mother and I finally decided enough was enough and we decided to bring him home. We learned how to care for him on our own with the aid of Hospice who would come out and the guidance of Doctors, Nurses and Rehab Staff who helped train us.

We took care of him almost 24 hours a day although we had some late night help so we could get some sleep.

He was unable to move on his own and was kept alive with the aid of feeding tube that I learned how to use to feed him and to give him all of his medications through.

I also was able to provide him with some Nursing and Rehab Skills that I had learned in addition to properly care for him, to clean him up, change him, position his body every two hours, get him in and out of bed and I would have been happy to do that as long as he needed and wanted me to.

It was the greatest honor and joy I have ever experienced to have been able to do this for the most beautiful, unconditionally loving, brilliant, funny, wise and unbelievably kind and generous man I’ve ever known.

We lovingly and gratefully took care of him for over 7 months at home and all during that time he was seemingly, albeit slowly, improving.

What we didn’t quite know during that time was that he was also experiencing TIAs or mini strokes.

I’ll share more of my journey and some of the things I learned from this experience in my next posting tomorrow and in the meantime, please share with us what may have been a moment that changed you in some way and what you learned from that or those experiences.

I look forward to hearing about your experiences and being with you soon…

Until we speak again, May You Continue to Create Your Life as a Masterpiece, Live it as a Work of Art and Make Each Moment An Epic Adventure…

Garrett

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