In Memory of our Cat

Just a little side note from my husband's story... After living with us for 15 years, our pet cat Sandy has died.  She was old (80 in cat years) and she was sick.  We took her to the vet and they ran blood tests, took an  x-ray and gave her an IV fluids and antibiotics.  I took her home and continued giving her fluids, sat up with her all night and took her back to the vet the next morning to continue the IV.  Then I received the call a few hours later that she was dying.  By the time I got back to the vet, she was gone.  

When I arrived, they quickly ushered me into the examining room, where I sat for several minutes alone.  Eventually the poor intern vet came in and told me.  I don't know what happened to me then, except I started to sob uncontrollably.

I just don't know what came over me.  I am usually a very level headed person, very realistic about everything and definitely not a crier.  I managed to get through probably the worst episode in my entire life, when my husband was so severely injured in his car crash so stoically.  I held up so I could keep everyone else together.  And here I sat in the vet's office crying my eyes out over our poor cat.  It only got worse.  The vet asked if I wanted to see her, I sobbed harder.  She then asked if I wanted her paw print impression.  That one did me in.  I could not even talk by this time.  I sobbed and shook my head no and just asked for the bill and her carrier and a few minutes to compose myself so I could drive home.  I felt so sorry for the young vet.  I am sure they deal with this all the time, but she just stood there not knowing what to say as I cried.    

Perhaps it was just a culmination of things.  Perhaps everything over the course of the last 5 years just came to a head in the vet's office.  I'm not sure, but I over it now. The day was just a sad one.  She had a good long life with us and will be missed.  

Rehab Begins

So after three months in the hospital, we were home!  Now the total test of my wits was going to begin.  While in the hospital, my husband was safe and sound.  He had people around him attentive to his every need.  But home was home and it was just me doing it all.

We had the week end to adjust to being home.  My husband got a chance to do nothing but rest for the first time in months.  However, come Monday morning, the next phase would begin.  I had to have him at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago by 9:00 am.  We got there and the receptionist was less than friendly.  (My husband and I would joke about that in the months to come.)  They took all our information and Tim was ready to begin.  He met all his therapists, we got the tour of the facility and received all our instructions.  For a facility that deals with people who have experienced neurological injuries, I have to say they were not exactly warm and fuzzy.  It is kind of odd as we have been to a number of the RIC facilities and only one of them really stands out in my mind as having good customer service.  But I suppose it is not about how nice they are, it is really about how good of care my husband would receive.  (Although, I would have liked a little of both.  Maybe it was just the mother hen in me!)

If I could back track a moment, I should have realized that things might not be all peachy keen once he started this out patient care.  The last week my husband was still in the hospital, the social worker was making arrangements with this RIC facility.  She told me that someone would contact me and come out to talk to us at the hospital.  Now I was at the hospital every day from sunrise to midnight.  My husband was napping one afternoon and I stepped out of his room and walked to the family waiting room for a moment to make a phone call.  When I returned I found a folder with papers in it about RIC.  My husband told me that someone was there and left it.  He did not know who she was or why she was there.  I stopped at the nursing station (which was directly outside my husband's room) to ask who it was.  They thought that it was a representative from RIC.  So I called them immediately and asked who was there and why she did not call me so I could be in the room.  Now I realize that my husband was a 49 year old man at the time.  However, he had suffered a massive TBI with complete memory loss and speech impairment.  You would think that instead of just wandering into his room, she would have called ahead so someone would be there with him.

Anyway, Tim was assigned a primary physical therapist to monitor all his care.  Within one week she was gone and a new one was assigned.  At this point, things got markedly better.  Several new therapists were brought in and things started to really improve.  I guess all it took was a change in management!

So for the first few weeks, Tim would go to therapy from 9:00 to noon.  They then convinced him that he needed to stay all day.  It took a lot of convincing for him to finally agree.  He now had to bring a lunch with him and any medications that he needed to take during the day.  This was going to be interesting because, he had no idea when he was supposed to take any of his medication or what they were for.  The facility said they could not give it to him.  He needed to be responsible for his own things.  Not so easy for someone with a brain injury.  I now had to come up with food he could easily eat one handed and drinks that he could open on his own.  I put his medication in a small envelope, packed it in his lunch and instructed him to take it when he unpacked his lunch to eat.  When we arrived in the morning, I would go with him to the kitchen and he would put his lunch in a specific place in the refrigerator so he would remember where it was and could reach it.  It always had to be in a paper bag, so when he finished eating, he could just throw it all away.

In the beginning, I stayed with him and just waited out in the lobby.  When he started to go all day, it was soon apparent that they really needed him to concentrate and I was becoming a distraction.  So I would bring him in the morning, stay for a little while and then come back later in the day.  This seemed to work out well as he was getting used to the routine.  The work was very, very difficult.  His communication skills were just starting to come back, but extreme pain persisted and fatigue was the worst.  His first month home was less than stellar.

Release Me...

Well it was late May.  It has been three agonizing, sometimes grueling months.  We were in the home stretch.  Arrangements were being made so I could finally bring my husband home!

In the hospital, we reviewed all the necessary things needed to bring Tim home.  We went over medications that he needed to be on, equipment that he needed to bring home, nurse visits, doctor appointments, physical therapy, speech therapy and  the layout of our house.  I was going to be his caretaker, so I needed to also be instructed on what my duties would be.

On the home front, we only had one bathroom and shower on the first floor.  It was not a very big one.  My husband's wheel chair would not fit through the doorway.  So we practiced before he left the hospital, how he would have to walk into the bathroom.  I had to remove the doors from the shower, hang a shower curtain to replace the doors and we bought a shower chair to fit into the stall.  It would prove to be very tricky once we got home because, Tim could slowly walk through the bathroom to the shower, but he could not step into the shower due to the ridge on the bottom where the doors fit into it and the spasticity in his right leg and not being able to bend his knee.  So he would walk in and turn around when he got to the stall.  I would jump into the stall behind him and the chair and he would fall backwards slowly into my arms and I would guide him to the chair.  He could then lift his left foot over the ridge and I would lift his right foot over and place it in the shower on the floor.  Talk about the trust issue.  There was no question about it.  He put all his faith in me, that I would not drop him and I never did.

Where to sleep was next.  All our bedrooms were upstairs.  I had started a plan to turn our garage into a bedroom on the first floor.  However, it would not be ready for some time.  So when Tim came home, we put a bed in our family room and a room divider up to give him some privacy.  I placed a commode next to the bed as using the toilet in the downstairs bathroom was too difficult.  A handicapped accessible bathroom was going to be built in his room.  For now these arrangements would have to work and they did for the next nine months.

Our floors were all hardwood.  So maneuvering around in a wheel chair would not be difficult.  A ramp with a deck was built next to the back door.  I could easily get him in and out of the house.  I gave my son several pieces of our furniture to make room through out our house.  I moved the dining room into the living room.  Then dumped the living room furniture.  I turned the dining room into a computer room.  My daughter moved into my upstairs bedroom, I moved my stuff into one of our smaller rooms, which did not matter because for the next year I slept on the couch in the family room to be near my husband.

Plans were made for him to attend day rehab at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.  At first they wanted him to attend all day from 9:00 am to 3:30 pm.  I denied it at first.  My husband had not been home for three months.  He was so tired and confused and needed to become adjusted to being in a new environment first.  So we arranged for him to start out with half day sessions and then build up to a full day with a nap.  By starting him out slowly this way, he was eventually able to be successful.

The day was finally here!  He had such a difficult time getting into the car that we owned, so we decided to ask my father in law to drive him home from the hospital as his car was much more rommier.  When we arrived to our street, it was lined up and down with police officers from all over as well as the bagpipe band that my husband had played with.  The band met us at the end of the block and as we turned onto our street, they marched and played him to our door.  It was the most spectacular welcome home I have ever seen.  All his fellow police officers streamed into our house one by one to shake his hand.  By the time it was over, my husband was totally exhausted.  But he was home!  A whole new part of his life was now going to begin.  But for this moment, all he wanted to do was get into his new bed in the family room and go to sleep.