Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Surgery went well; the good and bad of stubbornness

My dad's surgery went well yesterday. An new opening has now been created that will allow him to be able to urinate again on his own very soon. Right now the wait is on for the blood to clear out of his urine (caused by the surgery, which is normal), then they will remove the catheter (I had wrongly assumed, by the way, that the catheter would be removed during surgery), and when he is able to urinate on his own at least two times with no blood, he will then be cleared to go "home" (his home being the assisted living home, of course).

He was sleeping peacefully when I arrived at his new room this morning, a room he is now having to share with another man with Alzheimer's, who thankfully was also asleep. I didn't want to wake my dad, especially after finding out from my step mom that he had only been asleep for about two minutes before I arrived, and that was after not sleeping more than a few minutes all night long (according to the sitter). A nurse came in a few minutes later, however, and he woke up anyway, and was wide awake then, so I was able to visit with him.

He seemed to be in much better spirits today, and relented much easier when we told him he couldn't get out of bed yet, not to say he didn't try his hardest a few times. One thing I can say about my dad, he doesn't give up easy. He has that same stubborn streak in him that I have, and that my daughter also has. It can be a good thing when focused in the right direction, it can make you go further and do more than you otherwise might, and yet, it can also get you in big trouble if you aren't careful. My recent running injury is a good example of that. I continued to run with pain, stubbornly pushing through in hopes of continuing on the schedule of progress I wanted so badly to keep, which wound up putting me out of running altogether, and now I'm not even sure I'll ever be able to run long distance again.

I was glad to hear that they were planning to let him get out of bed this afternoon when the physical therapist came. Personally, I can't imagine having to stay in bed all the time when you feel like getting up. I would be going stir crazy.

2 comments:

  1. So glad to hear it went well. Prayers for no blood soon. (((Hugs)))

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you, Angela. I appreciate your feedback. I hope this Blog isn't a boring read, I try to make it as interesting as I can. ;-)

    ReplyDelete