Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I want to thank all of you who came today to help with the gigantic ramp. I know Dad was moved to see how many people showed up to help. Personally I don't know why he was surprised because he was always the first one to show up if anyone else needed help, so I think he deserves the pay back. He did a great job of supervising as you can see in the third picture. I helped as much as I could, but with so many people there it was tough. There were people from his church, a couple Haworth people (former and current), family and one of my friends from GR even came. (Thank you Cabana boy, you're a hellofaguy) Even Emi got in on the action! Charlie mostly was on overload from all the power tools and all the dirt to sit in - he is such a boy. We left at about 3 and I think they only had about 30-45 minutes left to do. It probably helped when Ruth promised ice cream when it was finish. As you can see it was a full day and I am sure my son Charlie shares what most of you felt after it was done.

Again, thank you from all of us!!

Update

So, Dad is healing well. He went for a check up at the surgeon's office late yesterday. They took off the VAC bandage because the idiot alarm wouldn't stop going off. He now has a dray bandage which means it won't heal as fast but it is healing well and it will be much easier to change it. We are still on for Saturday so keep that in mind. I have mad baking to do this week so all of you will have things to munch on.

Amazing how good I feel today after the news. The whole situation still sucks, but as I have said before I will take any positive I can get.

Need help

Here is my call out for help. We are building a large ramp for Dad at the house on Saturday, August 16th. We need more people to help. We will start between 8-9 am and continue as long as we need to. There will be food and beverages too. All you people that want to do something for him, this is your chance! Please let me know if you can help, I do not want to post a phone number on here so email me. If you click on the link for my profile you can email me. It would be better to know if you are coming but if you just want to show up you can do that too. Even if you can only help for a couple of hours we would appreciate it. I will even be there!

Thank you to anyone who can help!

Home at last

Dad came home last evening. There was a ton of crap on Friday that prevented it. Gotta love those insurance companies. They did not want to pay for the two home nurses required to change the vac bandage so they wanted to send him to a nursing home. So they went round and round, all the work was done at home and it was all very very frustrating for all involved. Thanks to the case manager at Holland Hospital for working her butt off. In the end, only becausa no nursing home would take him because of the MRSA and the amount of care he needed, the insurance company finally agreed to at least a week of two nurses going to the house. Unbelievable, we went full circle. Anyway, the home health care nurse came out today to get vitals and background info - she was very nice. As it stands they will come to change things on Mon, Wed & Friday then who knows. He is no longer on any antibiotics so he will need to be watched for symptoms of it getting worse. From what I hear they will have to pay the $400 a trip cost for an ambucab to pick him up after that to transport him to the hospital or wherever they will change things. Ruth is pursuing a ramp a home, so if anyone is willing to volunteer help to build it let me know. We have several people offering but I am not sure when this will all happen so I don't know how many will be available when the time comes. Hopefully we can get enough volunteers to help so we will only need to purchase materials. I will post when I know what is going on for sure.

We went out today so my kids could see him, they have not seen him in a few weeks because of hospitalization. He is not permitted to walk up or down stairs and will need someone with him at all times so I am sure if anyone wants to visit he may appreciate that. Feel free to email me and I can give you the house number to call. He is able to move about the house but gets tired very quickly. At least he is home and he is glad to be home. I brought him some protein packed food to try because he needs all the nutrients he can get. So we will see how this all goes.

So, that is what I know for now.

Going home?

As of last night I heard Dad was getting released today sometime. There is much busy working making the house ready. An ambucab-type thing will be bringing him home and transporting him up the stairs as he is NOT to walk up any stairs. A hospital bed is being delivered and his brothers came to move furniture to make room. He will switch to oral antibiotics once he leaves the hospital so we will need to cross our fingers a pray they keep things on the healing path. They did find a new small patch of the MRSA in the same area and hooked the vacuum tube into it somehow to try to prevent it from getting bigger. He will still need to have it changed every two days at home for at least 2-3 more weeks. Yesterday's change went well from what I heard. I did not talk to him last night because he was too groggy yet, but his nurse said he was doing well and they still expect to kick him out today. I am sure he is happy about that because he is bored out of his mind. I know there is some concern and apprehension with us though, we are very worried the oral meds will not be enough so he will need to be watched for signs of things getting bad again. Just another leg of this journey. I know there will be things for some of you to help with since he will basically be confined to the living room most of the time. So I will post requests as I have them. I am thinking at this point after he is settled he may like visitors since he will be a recluse for a time. I will talk with him about it. I may go out tomorrow and hopefully will be taking the kids out Sunday. My daughter misses him but wants no part of seeing him in the hospital with the IVs and such. But again all is dependent on how he feels.

Keep up the prayers.

p.s. I did start a new blog for my gram if anyone is interested:

http://nonnynews.blogspot.com/