Rehabilitation

By the time he had arrived at Health South, he had begun to regain movement and feeling in his left leg. With this improvement they were going to work on teaching him to walk again. Even with the new movement in his legs, he was still going to have to rely on a wheel chair for awhile.


Every so often they were going to allow home visits. We had made changes to our house so that he could stay in the basement, which was accessible by our garage, so he would not have to rely on going upstairs. By the end of May and the beginning of June we had finished remodeling our upstairs. My dad wanted to see the finished upstairs but he still could not go up the stairs. My spilt-level home was located on a hill. If a person were to enter the house from the front, there would be two sets of stairs; one going up and one going down. However, if a person were to enter from the backyard, they would upstairs. So to get my dad upstairs, we had to wheel him into our backyard and take him through the back door. To take him through the back door we had to lift him up two steep stairs. We did not have a board sturdy enough to make a ramp. Once he was done looking at our new living room, we took him out the same way we brought him in.

It was the first time in my life where we all had to take care of my dad. When I was little, he would carry me to bed. When we were in the mountains, and I would think we were lost, he would lead the way. I had to do everything to keep myself from crying. This was not my dad and this is not who he wanted to be.

A couple weeks went by and my dad’s walking improved. He moved on from a walker to a cane that he still uses today. Health South was ready to release my dad home. My dad would still have therapy but it would all be done from our house.

I was relieved to have him in the house again. Due to his physical condition he would still not be able to go up and down the stairs for awhile. My dad normally would spend most of his time downstairs watching TV or working in his office anyway. Since we knew this would be where he would be most comfortable, we made a place in the family room for a twin size bed for him. We set a lamp at the top of his bed and hooked it up to a push button hanging on the wall. That way he could turn on and off the light without having to find his way in the dark. Any type of fall could seriously agitate his condition.