Anyone have any sweets? Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

So Friday was just a terrifying day for all of us. But the great news is that Dad is back to his usual self. Friday night he was placing his orders for food, including sweets. Mom made the ICU nurses some fudge, to which Dad conned them into bringing him 6 PIECES! They also included the milk. Saturday he ate breakfast, lunch and dinner and was anxious to get back to a regular room. They finally kicked him out of the ICU around 5pm back to the Ritz Carlton of hospital rooms. Dad's room is a suite, complete with an en suite that has its own refrigerator, microwave, TV and DVD player, desk and chairs. The bathroom has a vanity including a vanity chair, blow drier and vanity mirror. Then the room has a couch, 2 chairs, another TV and DVD player.

Today was a little disheartening for Dad. There seems to be conflicting reports on his latest MRI, whether he has a new fracture at L3 or not. The floor doctor thinks this "new" fracture is the cause of the pain in his legs. Dr. Kazhdan doesn't, since the fracture was already there, there is no compression on his spine and everything else looks the same. Tomorrow morning she will talk with the radiologist specifically to see what "new" fractures they are referring to. In the meantime the back doctors will come back to look at him. The bad thing is that his bones can't tolerate surgery in this fragile state. So he is has highs and lows in emotions right now. Dr. Kazhdan did get him up to dangle his legs, which he was able to do without extreme pain. He did start to feel tingling and slight pain again, but they didn't press the issue.

Since his scare on Friday, he hasn't had any pain medication, and hasn't been in any pain. Dr. Kazhdan is going to start to decrease the lyrica dose, in hopes that this is what is causing the swelling and pain in his legs. Some of the information I pulled had a few people have this adverse reaction to lyrica. As well all know Dad has to be special, so maybe this is what is causing all the problems. Time will tell, since lyrica and baclofen have to be slowly tapered off.

In efforts to make his temporary home feel more like home, mom brought a small Christmas tree to decorate the place. Every morning Dad has been listening to Christmas music, so we will just have to bring the music to him. It would have been nice if he could have heard the children caroling in the hall the day he was in ICU. They were 2nd graders and came to sing Christmas carols but weren't able to go into the ICU. We enjoyed it in the waiting room though.