Hi Everyone, this is Carrie here....sending out some funny pics from today with my dad. The first one is dad sticking his tongue out at me while I was laughing at him getting a much needed shave from my mom. The second one is a nice big smile I got when I told him I was taking his picture for everyone. It was really great to see my dad after being away for 2 weeks. My mom had been telling me how sleepy he had been and what I saw was very different! Yesterday I heard him talk after being silent for 6 weeks!!! I laughed my ass off when the first thing out of his mouth was "get me out of here!" It re-assured me though because that is my dad to a tee! They have given him a smaller trach that we can cap so sound can come out when he speaks.
We have been having many conversations now that he can talk and he is trying to put things together and figure out things which is a little hard for him now, his brain is making new connections so his memory and such is not so good. We did get a great welcoming today that let us know he knows who we are, my mom and I walked in at noon to find dad working with the speech pathologist and she asked him who we were and he said "my best friends" and then she asked him but who are they, he told her my wife and daughter and then she asked him what are our names were and he replied, "lovely linda and carrie". That was the best christmas present I could have ever asked for! Some of you who have been following the blog know that for a while dad said he didn't know who we were. I think he didn't know how to put it together but that he did "know" who we were but he couldn't say our names so this was a big deal! It made me very happy and today was a fun day. Lots of activities with the shaving and then we gave him a shampooing and conditioning since he hadn't had one since he went into the hospital 6 weeks ago, he looked like a new man! The towel on his head was a cool cloth since he was saying he was hot, I think he kinda looked like a mummy.

He is still having trouble swallowing so we also practiced some of that today and tonight in hopes of him passing the swallow test which will then enable the doctors to take the trach out and get him into rehab!!!

My dad asked me yesterday where were all of the sympathy cards since I had been telling him about how everyone was calling and emailing, etc so today I brought in the stack of cards and read every single one of them to him. I want everyone to know how happy this made my dad, he loved knowing everyone was thinking of him and I asked him do you know who they are and he replied yes, I think it is all coming back to him just slowly and in bits. Your cards were all awesome and I enjoyed reading them since it was the first time I had seen them as well. Thank you all very much.

So today was a great day and I am hoping for tomorrow to be just as good, if not better. Thank you for the cards and the support and special thanks to the people who have been checking in on my mom. I will be here until the 2nd and tracy arrives the 23 and stays till the 28th. Our cousins Alyson and Laura will also be coming for a few days to check in on us which will be nice.

till tomorrow...