We Saw Dad

Ricky and I finished up in Fullerton and drove back up, stopping for some much-needed lunch along the way and then stopping in to see Dad. We confirmed our impression from this morning: there's no real change. He's still intubated, and the nurse said that no elective surgery will be scheduled until Monday, so that's the earliest he will have the tracheotomy. That procedure will make him immensely more comfortable: they will be able to remove the tube from his airway. Then they can back off the medications, and he will begin to wake up. But it looks like that will all take a few more days. In the meantime, he's still asleep and unresponsive. The nurse assured us, though, that he can hear us, so we repeated the story to him again: the accident, the hospital, the surgery, the house, the cats, etc. We're trying to make sure that he isn't worried, that he knows we're taking care of things for him. His job is to heal.

We found Dad's friend Kathy.

Ricky fixed the faucet in Dad's kitchen, since the big leak (more like a small fountain) there would have made housecleaning very difficult. He did a great job. Once that was taken care of, we got the dishwasher running. We threw away all the perishable food we found on counters and in the refrigerator. We tried to clean a little, but at this point we're ready to bring in a professional crew. We brought back some clothes for Dad to use when he recovers. This afternoon we're going to spend sometime watching football while we organize all the paperwork we brought back from Dad's house. We've got file folders, labels, mesh desk organizers, key rings, etc. etc. spread out on the living room floor here in my house. We left Dad's house secured and under the watchful eye of his kind neighbor Laura, with a big stack of canned and dry cat food and fresh cat litter. I probably won't get back to the house until next Saturday.