Hi to all,

Dad had a fairly good day this morning and afternoon. Randy was with him evening and reports that he was in good spirits, but wanted to go to bed rather early. He ate about half of his dinner and then was insistent on going to bed. When the nurse brought in his medicine, Dad refused to take the medicine. Randy and the Nurse tried to convince him that it was important to take it, but he still refused. The nurse will try again in a little while. I am not aware of him not taking his medicine before. He has given us a bit of a hard time on occasion, but it think that we have always been able to get him to take it. Dad was significantly less sore from his injury today and was fairly alert during the morning therapies. Those of you who don’t know, Dad was extremely sore from the fall, to the point he couldn’t assist in his movement from bed to chair to auto, etc. I have not been able to get a report today from the therapists as to their feelings about his progress, but hope to do so tomorrow.
I spent about 40 minutes on the phone this evening with Matt Evans (Ken’s son) who you will remember is a neurologist back at the Cleveland Clinic. I received a fair amount of insight from talking with him that I will try to convey in this email. Matt tells me that the temporal lobe of the brain is the part responsible for receiving short term memories and converting them into long term memories. The temporal lobes on both sides of the brain are involved in this process, and in a young person one side can be sufficient to do the work fairly well. In an older person like Dad, when one temporal lobe is injured the other one has more difficulty taking up the entire job resulting in some of the memory challenges we are seeing in Dad. He further explained that when there was trauma elsewhere in the body (the TIA, the Congestive Heart Failure, the fall) that it further delays and slows down any recovery – especially in a 94 year-old. He said that it is impossible to know how long significant recovery can occur, but that he wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that Dad is near the end of his recovery. He said that the experience of being in another place in time could be a result of other problems in the body, such as infections. Obviously, Matt has not seen Dad and can only react to my verbal descriptions. All of this is handicapped by Dad’s age and decreased ability to recover from problems. We may want to take Dad to a neurologist here locally to get additional input into what we should expect. Do any of you have knowledge of one we should consider?
Charlotte suggested, and I agree that she and I have not involved Heavenly Father enough in our own considerations. We have determined that we are going to fast for Dad on Wednesday of this week and to ask for both insight and wisdom for us and for healing and recovery for Dad. We invite any of you who would like to to join us in this fast.

The schedule for the next few days follows:
Sunday morning – Karlene
Sunday afternoon -- Karlene
Sunday evening – Jamie
Monday morning and afternoon – Seth
Monday evening – Randy
Tuesday morning – Marlene
Tuesday afternoon – Richard
Tuesday evening – Sallie
Wednesday morning and afternoon – Seth
Wednesday evening – Open
Thursday morning and afternoon – Seth
Thursday evening – Open
Friday morning and afternoon – Seth
Friday evening – Open
9/25 - Saturday morning – Donna
Saturday afternoon – Donna
Saturday evening – Seth
Sunday morning – Open
Sunday afternoon -- Open
Sunday evening – Open
Monday morning and afternoon – Seth
Monday evening – Open
Tuesday morning and afternoon – Seth
Tuesday evening – Open
Wednesday morning and afternoon – Seth
Wednesday evening – Open
Thursday morning and afternoon – Seth
Thursday evening – Open
Friday morning and afternoon – Seth
Friday evening – Open

You will note that we need a lot of help beginning on Wednesday. I would appreciate any help you can give. Thank you for your efforts in the past.


On another note, Karlene has offered to coordinate family use of the St George condo. Any time you want to use the condo, please contact Karlene to schedule it. Thank you Karlene for offering to handle this.



Love,
Martin