So many things have changed for the better since FIL got to rehab. He has been doing PT, OT and Speech. His murmurings have become words...lots of words. Lots and lots of words. Our conversations have been long, funny, arduous, and serious. They have him up and walking in the halls, and his PT therapist, Joe, is fantastic with him.
He still doesn't sleep well. Apparently TBI's cause sleep disturbances, and FIL has them. Up until the past night or two he was clocking about two hours of sleep a night. They started him on an anti-anxiety/depressant and that appears to have kicked in, and he slept about 6 hours last night. However, when he is up, he is busy. Busy. The staff has to keep him close all the time, because he has no common sense when it comes to staying in his wheelchair. He thinks he can hop up any time and walk. He can't. We've had more than one fall now. First they kept him near the nurse's station. Now they keep him IN the nurse's station. He can be found rummaging through drawers, tapping on keyboards (computers are off), and chatting up the nurses. He always has a mission. Always has a story.
Yesterday when we were by he was in the nurse's station. He was needing all of us to get busy. It was time to pack up. We were moving. Where were we moving? Charlotte? Raleigh? Atlanta? Charlotte it was decided. Steve, the nurse and I would ride together, and he would ride with Scot and Joyce. We needed to get moving. He'd never seen such an unorganized mess. What were we doing? Where were the boxes? The longer we took the more ornery he became... There was another resident behind the desk with us...he grabbed the guy's wheelchair and spun him around..."Bill, where are the boxes? Do you know who is organizing this arrangement?" Of course, the resident wasn't Bill, and he wasn't involved in the move. LOL.
Later we went outside and I was trimming his nails. We mentioned he needed a haircut, and it then became his obsession. He'd been waiting two days at this barber shop for a haircut, and yesterday it was so busy they did 1000 haircuts. He was tired of waiting. How much longer would it be?? We told him it'd be tomorrow b/c I needed to get the scissors and clippers, but that wasn't good enough, b/c tomorrow no longer means anything to him. How much would it cost? A dollar? When we said that sounded good, he wanted it in writing. We had to go to the nurse and get a one line contract written up that says his haircuts would be $1 for the next 100 years. I could go on and on.
The facility called MIL to get her to agree to a "sitter" because he is so busy and never stops moving. She agreed they could hire one for the weekend, and then as needed other weekends when they didn't have enough staff to keep someone with him one on one all day. This morning when we arrived he was being walked by his sitter, so we were chatting with his nurse. Apparently the sitter wasn't with him at 6 am when he got up, b/c his alarm went off. By the time the nurse got down there, he had peed in the trashcan, put on his roommate's shoes, and was sitting on his roommate's bed (with his roommate sound asleep in it!!) The brain is such a crazy, complicated thing.
While yesterday the facility was UNORGANIZED, and a few days ago the place was CROOKED, today it was a resort. He hoped we'd stay another day, so we said we would. Shortly thereafter he was once again ready to go home...which is how visits typically go. He is ready to leave. He wants to go home. He wants to leave.
If we can get him eating food, and using the restroom and sleeping...it might just happen.
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