time to blow this popsicle stand

Today we leave the hotel and spend our last few days with dad's friend Robert.
We have been spending our days with dad as he does his physio and recovers and rests.
We have met so many people here who either have MS or love someone with MS.
Like I said before, the people we have met are so positive and haapy dispite the physical troubles they have.
Dad is doing really good. He has seem many improvments since the surgery.
Some of the improvments are-
   No more headaches
   Better muscle controll
   He can cross and uncross his legs again
   He has better strength in his legs
   His finger and hand dexterity are back
Some of the things we have seen in others are similar and also very different. Such as we met a girl who is 40 who hasn't been able to feed herself in 2 years and the day after her surgery she fed herself breakfast and wheeled her wheel chair.
We met a girl who hasn't been able to see properly in many years, also 42 years old. Her vision is not double anymore and she can see clearly. She said her head felt clear again. Dad also talked about his head feeling clearer and not so heavy.
We have seen people who haven't walked in 2 years standing and taking many steps with a little help.
Dad had 80% blockage in both his jugular veins. They did 2 balloons, one in each to clear the blockage.
They do not do stints on veins.
Dad is doing squats every day. Also they have him doing step-ups onto a wooden step. He  does sets of 15 each leg.he also rides a bike 10-15 minutes a day during physio.
They work him hard for about an hour. At first he couldn't walk back to the room after physio as his legs where so tired and he was just done. Today he walked out on his own. What a difference 1 week of physio has made.
All in all, he is very happy and doing very well. We think he will continue to make improvements every day.
Yesterday we went to Cafe Britt and dad came with for a ride. We walked around the coffee plantation and bought a bunch of coffee. Today we will go and see more of the country.
Thanks for all the prayers

Will post more pictures soon.

pictures

               The pre op physio appointment. Tney did some tests to see what dad could do before the surgery.

                                        Opps. Got a little burnt the first day in the sun

                                            In the hospital before the surgery with our new friends

                                                                   Waiting to be admitted

           The meeting with one of the doctors before the surgery. They all took lots of time asking questions and answering our questions

                                                 Putting in the intervenous before the surgery.

                         After the surgery. Dada was feeling great.

                 First thing the next morning dad needed to get up and go see if he could find someone to dance with. He found Jocelyne. She was game and they did a little 2 step.

   Little did we know that we would be giving blood thinner needles twice a day once we got back to the hotel.

                                First day of real physio. 10 minutes on the bike to start off with.

 The physio people are great. They worked dads legs to show him the excersises that would help to strengthen them so he will walk better.

I have been printing out well  wishes and notes that people have been sending to dad out. If you want to let him know you are thinking of him, send me a comment or an e-mail and I will be sure to get it to him.

update

After leaving the hospital on Thursday everyone in our group was very tired. It was a long couple of days and you could see it in the faces of the people who had just had surgery.


I haven't talked about our "group". We have been with a group of 4 other families that arrived the same day and also had the surgery the same day as dad. There is Heather from Calgary with her friends Vern and Dawn from B.C. Jocelyn with her husband Dennis from Ottawa. Gail and her husband Glen from Nova Scotia. Henry and Andrea not sure where they are from . We also met a new couple from Boisseveine today, Murray and his wife (?).

We think we have the best group here. Because of being the situation that it is, we have formed a special bond with these other people. We have been together from the first meeting with the hospital and have followed through with all the dr. appointments and physio and because we are all in the same hotel we get together during the day to compare how we are getting along. It has been a life saver to be able to talk to these other people.

Dean is well know as the guy to call if anyone needs to be lifted into a van or helped in any way really. These bunch of people are amazing.



One other thing that we didn't know we would have to do, is give dad his blood thinner injection twice a day. They discharged us all from the hospital on Thursday, handed us all a bag of needles and said we were to give them twice every day. As if this was the most normal thing in the world for us to do. We all kind of looked at them like, what??? They showed us once how to do it and off we went. So, now we give needles....



So back to getting "home" from the hospital. It was a very long afternoon. Dad felt very weak. He didn't feel or look nearly as good as immediatly following the surgery. It felt a bit discouraging as he felt so great at the hospital. He basically lay in bed all afternoon and we had a bit of a rough night. None of us really slept all night

But today, things feel much better. His energy is back, he didn't have a headace which is very nice to see. His balance came back throughout the day and things are feeling much better. Now to get through tonight. I think we have things set up so it will be easier for everyone.



I am still trying to upload pictures. Blogger doesn't seem to be working well right now. I will try again tomorrow.

and he danced...

(I will try to upload a video and pictures tomorrow. Today it is not working)

Morning after the surgery. Dad wanted to dance. We walked over to our friends room who also had the surgery yesterday and they had a fun time showing off how great they felt.
Very fun!

We all got discharged from the hospital at 3pm and everyone was feeling ready to go to their rooms and rest. It has been a big last few days. But I think you would get an overall feeling of happiness amongst the group. Even though there were no huge miracles, everyone felt some differnces in how they felt. Now the hard work of Physio is yet to come. Tomorrow dad has 2 appointments with the physiotherapist.


Dad has another 12 days of pysio left. Every day will be tonnes of hard work. Please keep him in your thoughts as this is the tough part.

All is well

Dad just came up from recovery (8pm). ALL IS GREAT!! He said he feels like dancing(might be the drugs talking)LOL. But he looks great, sounds great and is VERY happy.  I will try to post some pictures tomorrow. But just wanted to let everyone know that your prayers have been heard and we are very happy her is Costa Rica

surgery day!!

We are waiting to be picked up by the taxi and brought to the hospital. The procedure will only take place around 4 to 5 pm tonight. It will be a lot of waiting around while he fasts during the day. The procedure will take from 45 min. to 2 hours depending on what they find. Then an hour in recovery and back up to his room where he will have to lie flat for 8 hours to prevent complications in the insition by his groin. Tomorrow we will know more. For now I have to get down to the van.
Wendy

First day of appointments

It is hard to believe that I have not had time to write in the blog, but time just gets away from us and suddenly it is late and the day is done.


We arrived in Costa Rica on Sat around 7pm or so. There was suppposed to be a driver waiting for us. We looked and waited and got others to help us. We finally decided that it was time to get ourselves to the hotel. Dean spotted another group of people who looked in the same boat as we and found they were also waiting for a ride to the same hotel. So we all got in a van together.

The hotel is quite nice. It has a resteraunt, a pool and a small bar. After getting dad setttled into the room, Dean and I took a walk to see about getting a small dinner together. The hotel restaraunt is quite expensive and we really didn't need much. We walked up to a small 7-11 type place and bought some bread, ham and drinks.



Sunday morning we all felt much better. We were rested and with the sun shining, it felt great to walk over to the buffet and grab a wonerful breakfsast. We then gave dad's friend Robert a call and he came to pick us up. We spent the day at Robert and Zeda's house. Zeda made us an amazing dinner of BBQ ribs, shrimp shish-ka-bobs and Chillean wine. They live in a small subburb and so we had a wonderful relaxing afternoon. Robert also took us for a drive around to show us some property they are developing.

This morning (monday) we had breakfast and headed over for dad's firt appointment. It was a pre-op appointment where he got an EKG, blood tests and an ultra sound of the veins and arteries in his neck. They check to see where the blockages are so they have a heads up for the opperation. They can't tell for certain if there will be more blockages than what they see on the ultra sound until they start the operation and put the dye through the viens and then they willl see more. SO far we know that Dad does have a blockage in his right jugular vein and something wrong with his left vertabrae vein. The ultra sound showed that the blood on his left vertabrae vein was not draining properly and as a result the blood was back traking into his brain, which is not good. So they will try to fix that on Wednesday.

We spent the whole morning at his appointments and stopped at the nearby malll to get some lunch. It was really a lot of walking and waiting and as a result dad was ready to get back to the hotel and have a rest and get off his feet.



We have been paired up with a lady and her friend from Calgary for our appointments. Dawn and Heather came down on the same day as us and it has worked out great as we have made some new friends. Heather also has MS and it was really neat to meet them in Calgary airport and now again at the hotel. Heather is also having her surgery on Wednesday so we have been travelling from appointment to appointment together. We also had lunch with them at the mall.At 3:15 dad has his pre-op physio appointment so they can evaluate his condition before surgery and will know how things have changed post surgery.

Apparently this is a bit of a workout so I am hoping that dad will get some rest before his appointment as he has had a big day already. Dean and I are getting a bit of sun and now I have time to make a blog post.
I heard that the kids don't have school today. Sounds like a nice long weekend for them before exams.

On another note. We have seen James from town and things are looking really great for him. He is traipsing around the hotel. Looking very steady and happy to be able to walk well again. Very great to see. Everyone at the hotel that is here for the MS procedure get together and talk about what they have been going through and supposrt each other through the days before and after the surgery. It is very nice to see people banding together and helping one another through this time. Some people have had great results and others have been dissapointed with how they feel after. Some peoples expectaions were a bit high for the results that they got I guess. But most are smilling which is great to see.

Well, time to get back into the sun. No sense in waisting the time I have in the shade when the sun is shinning. I tryed to type on the computer in the sun and I couldn't see the screen. Turns out we don't have internet in our room for free,so I have to come out to the lobby. Which will make it harder to blog and skype I guess.