Well, yesterday was Dad's surgery for his shoulder. I think I mentioned before that he had a total joint replacement done on his shoulder. Well, he fractured it. Now, they went in and fixed it. He will be staying in the hospital longer than last time to try and be sure that the same postoperative complications don't occur. We're all pretty anxious to see how this all plays out. Mom is very stressed, understandably. Last time Dad was in the hospital, I chose to not bring Caleb to visit. I wasn't sure how it would all play in with Caleb's anxiety problems. Well, Caleb has been doing amazingly well with his anxiety, to the point that the psychologist feels that we don't need regular visits (yeah!!!!). Anyway, I chose to bring him to the hospital today because he really wanted to go see Grandpa. Both the kids did very well (Brent has Guard, so he wasn't with us.) That is, Caleb did well until right before we needed to leave. The whole time we were there, he kept asking "when Grandpa gets better, can I go to his house?" I told him, "of course!" We had to explain that Grandpa needed to stay at the hospital for a while to get better. Caleb must have been thinking of it a lot. He started crying very loudly when it was time to leave. It was the kind of emotional, anxious, "tight" crying that usually leads up to his meltdowns. I got him guiet enough to get to the car. When we got home, I tucked Abby into nap and curled up with Caleb. He was able to tell me that he was sad that Grandpa was at the hospital and that he was scared because Grandpa couldn't get up from bed. Wow. How do you tell a four-year-old that it will be "okay?" Caleb's really starting to talk through things....and that's been really helping him emotionally.
I should probably say that Dad is able to get out of bed, he just needs help. His gait is very unsteady and shuffling (due to the Parkinson's). He's right handed and his righ shoulder is the problem right now, so it's hard to use a cane.
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