Not so perky

Yesterday Dad was really quiet.  Not a lot of expression on his face, and he looked so, so tired. Mom decided that it was better for him to come down to breakfast in the morning than have me send it up.  I was sending it up on Monday, Wednesday and Friday because the breakfast is at 8:30 and the aid comes to do the shower at 9:30.  Yesterday was Thursday and he was down for breakfast for the second day in a row.  He wasn't responding to the simple questions I asked him and he only ate a little breakfast.

When it was time to get him up the stairs, things were a little shaky.  He can usually walk up the first four steps to my landing while holding on to the rail and with someone behind him, but each step seemed arduous.  He was slow to follow instructions for getting into the stairlift and I wondered if we were going to make it, but we did.  The nurse, Melissa, came later and Mom talked about him coming downstairs again, but I have never seen his eyes look so tired! His eyes looked really small, almost shrunken.  I convinced Mom that getting him out of bed when he was that tired was actually dangerous and that he had already had a lot of activity and she agreed after she looked at his face.

Again, later in the day, Eric had helped him come down and I was going to take him back upstairs and we got to the bottom of the staircase and he couldn't lift his leg to get his foot on the first step.  I felt his strength failing him and quickly pulled the walker over so he could sit on it instead of falling.  I realized in that moment how lucky we have been that he strong enough to transfer from bed to chair, chair to toilet, chair to stairlift, etc.

I was able to get him from walker to wheelchair, but it took him a while to understand everything I was asking him to do.  I wheeled him about the back door, up the sidewalk on the south side of the house and through the front door, the only path that bypasses the first four stairs of our split level staircase where no stairlift is installed yet (still waiting on our neighbor who was paid for installing both stairlifts two weeks ago).  Getting him from chair to stairlift so he could go the rest of the way upstairs took longer than ever, and again the transfer at the top to the other wheelchair, and the final transfer to his bed too a while.

Mireille was at the house working with me at the time and came upstairs to help as she could see we were struggling a bit.  Dad's face lit up when he saw Mireille and he said, "Mireille, did you hear about the pony that talked so softly?"  Mireille smiled and said, "Was he a little horse?" and Dad rolled his eyes playfully because Mireille had finished his joke.  He had perked up just a little bit, just in time for nap therapy.