To start this blog off the right way, I'll be happy to catch you all up on what has happened so far. So, lets start at the very beginning... My father, sister and I moved to Kentucky in 2009. He wasn't in perfect health but was as healthy as I ever remember my father being. For those who don't know, my father has be dealing with multiple health problems for a long time now like congestive heart failure, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Given all of these, he was in pretty good health. We found a house relatively quickly and moved in. One day our father was walking around said house and stepped on a sharp piece of plastic. It didn't bother him much at first but as those of you who are familiar with diabetes will know, foot injuries can get pretty bad really quickly. The cut got worse and started turning black, so we went to Dr. Self (circulation doctor) and he said that he needed bypass surgery done on his right leg. Any surgery is extra scary when you have congestive heart failure but Dr. Senior (heart doctor) monitored him closely and he came out of it with flying colors, though they did need to remove a little bit of the flesh on his heal where he was cut. (Sorry if that was a little vivid...) Soon he was allowed to go home. At this point we were crashing with Aunt Nancy and Uncle Ron's and while he was had a little trouble moving around for a week or two, and it was left to all of us to change his bandages (eww) everything was fine. So not too long after we went back to our home and things were good again for a long while.
Then Dad started to feel numbness in his right hand and he had a little trouble getting his ideas from his head to his mouth. It turned out that he had a thing called a mini stroke. This is pretty much what it sounds like, a stroke that doesn't due as much damage as a full out stroke. We were told that he would be fine as long as that was all that it was, but that these little strokes can lead to worse strokes and if that happened it could be totally different in a very bad way. So, we tried to keep an eye on him. While all of this happened, he started retaining water. He just kept getting bigger and bigger until Olivia and I decided to take him to the local ER. We waited around literally all day just for them to tell us that he was retaining water and that all he needed was a diuretic... WRONG! They prescribed him the diuretic and sent him home telling us to bring him in if it gets worse. We were back two weeks later. They were shocked because this was the worse case of retaining water that they had ever seen. Turns out he has renal failure. It was so bad the they put him in the ICU. They called in all of his doctors (Self, Senior, Waldridge - general, and now J - kidney). Very quickly they set him up with an appointment to undergo Dialysis. That morning (literally and hour before he was supposed to go on) he had another stroke, and this one was serious. He was left not able talk, move, or swallow. It was a very scary time. The dialysis was delayed but it happened eventually and he hasn't been off since. When it comes to the stroke, here's the deal. Our father has a blood clot in his heart... just sitting there. It isn't dangerous as long as it doesn't move, but the danger is in the risk that pieces of it can break off and move through the blood stream and cause another stroke. They decided to lessen this risk by putting him on Warfrin, which is a blood thinner for those who don't know. Dad regained some of his mental faculties very quickly. He could recognize us in a couple days, and he could swallow within a week, but for the rest, he needed to go to a rehab center, so he was sent to Frasier Rehabilitation Center.
I'll skip through most of the tedious details, because it was a long hard year that followed, but he worked with Frasier for many months before coming home, and had home visits for months after that, and still had to push himself after they stopped coming. He went from not being able to move, to moving from a bed to a wheel chair, to moving with a walker, to moving with a cane. He went from needing 24/7 supervision to being able to make his own lunches. He went from mumbling to being able to have intelligent, if slow, conversations. You have no clue how proud we are of him for working his way back. And he did! He was back to where he was before the major stroke! Now because of all of this, our father was eligible to apply for early Medicare. That was a nightmare, I won't even get into it, but the point is that he now has medicare on top of his original Health insurance, Letter Carriers, which is also an amazing health insurance plan.
Everything was good. Then about three months ago he started having pains in his foot. It started out as a dull pain but quickly got worse. We asked the Dialysis nurses about it and they said to go to the hospital ER just encase... they said it was neuropothy, which is basically diabetes related pains and are nothing to be too concerned about... WRONG AGAIN!!! Seriously, the place peeves me off... anyway it just got worse and worse until, we got an appointment with an actual foot Doctor, who said that the circulation in his foot was un believably horrible, like nonexistent! So we went back to Dr. Self, who said that he needed another bypass, this time on the other leg. He set it up for a week later and admitted him into the hospital, where they put him on morphine to help with the pain. Needless to say that he went loopy. My father doesn't have a very high tolerance for pain meds. While he was there, blisters started to form on his toes because of the bad circulation. he already had a really bad one on his big toe from stubbing it a couple days before that was turning black, but these just popped up. The Doctors didn't seem to worried about them though so we didn't worry. Nope, we were too busy worrying about the bypass surgery. Pretty much all the doctors wanted him to let them just amputate his foot because his heart had gotten worse since the last bypass. His chances of surviving were worse than 50/50! But you know my father! He can take whatever you throw at him. He got through.
Now the recovery started! He had gone through the surgery perfectly and everyone was astounded, but here's the rub. Do you remember that morphine I told you about. He never really recovered mentally from it. He was still in a haze and groggy and not able to form sentences or remember names. It was almost like he had another stroke! He is still not recovered. I think that is what it may well be... Problem number two with recovery, his toes. Remember those blisters? Well because they had almost no blood flowing to them to help them heal, they started to decay. He had a very bad case of gangrene in all of the toes on his left foot except the pinky. His toes got black, and then they started to shrivel... Thus giving this blog its name. It was Olivia's idea, don't blame me! But he's had to get the toes amputated. It stinks, but it is still a lot better than losing the whole foot.
At the moment, our father at Crestview, a nursing home/rehab facility in Shelbyville. It is seriously on two minutes away from our house, which is nice. There they are helping him with physical, speech, and occupational therapy. He is there on a temporary basis for now but if he doesn't get better soon, he might need to go in on a more permanent basis, which would stick but what can you do? But then again, he's worked his way back before, right?
Well there you are, all caught up. :) Olivia will post again soon with some pictures. I think some will be just of us and dad, but I'm pretty sure some will be of his zombie toes and him de-zombie toed... Anyway I'd like to thank all of you for caring and reading this. Thank you. We'll do our best to keep you updated.
Bye
Lily C
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