April 16th

Hello, Dale here. I'm sort of writing in lieu of mom for the moment, because (surprise surprise) she's having computer troubles at home. But she's not being rude or neglectful, she wanted me to let everyone know that. She's also having trouble with her email, so that's the same story there. Anyway, today was a pretty good day all around. The weather was great, so dad got to go for a little journey in the great outdoors...but the wind was a little chilly for him so he couldn't really take too much. Hopefully it'll stay this nice so he can visit outside more often...because we all know how pleasant it is to spend all your time in that stale hospital air. Anyway, we also received a bit of really good news today as well; They have assessed dad for the move to Wascana, and have given him the thumbs up. We're just waiting on a bed to open up now, and it'll finally be time for a change of scenery. They were also working on dad's swallowing some more today, with some thickened cranberry juice (they didn't say what they thickened it with, but I'll tell that part of the story later). When he took to that well, they gave him some applesauce too, which was even thicker...so it might not be too terribly long before he's eating real food again and they can get that damn tube out of his belly. Anyway, he also had a very very good day in therapy. When mom and jackie got up to his room, he went right for the letter board and kept spelling out 'w-a-l-k' over and over again. They were a little confused because he kept shaking his head when they asked if he wanted to go for a walk. It must have been a little frustratng for everyone, cause Jackie said "I swear, if you spell walk one more time..." in a quasi-threatening fashion...you know her. Anyway, finally he expanded his thought a little, and they got it; He was saying he walked! I guess they had him take a couple of steps in the therapy room, which is huge news. Des and I got there a little later in the afternoon, when dad as just getting settled into bed, and for some reason he was being very giggly. This is what caused us to wonder just exactly what they had thickened that juice with...what sort of novelties had he been consumming? But yeah, it was real good to see, it was probably the most himself he's been since the start of this whole ordeal. Just being a pain like dad is. It was actually really funny...he just kept cracking up and couldn't seem to contain himself at all. He was making us sit his bed up, then 5 minutes later lay it back down...he urged Jackie to, for reasons we will never understand, move a plant from by the door to by the window...laughing all the while. So it was really good to see our goofy dad being our goofy dad again. Anyway, I think I may be rivalling mom's novels here with this one, but we had a good day, and its nice to be able to share so much good news. So yeah...good stuff. I guess we'll see what tomorrow has for us, and run with it. Thanks for reading, praying for, and thinking of us.
The Dale