Tuesday Night Update

We just left the hospital for the night to come back home to eat and catch some rest. Dad had many more visitors today. Here are some main points:

1. Dad has had many visitors stop by to see him. This means so much to him. He just cries every time he thinks about the time people have taken out of their holiday and busy schedules to visit him. However it really wears him out if the visits are too long, so the doctors have asked us to limit all visits to 5 minutes or less. They also have rules that only 2 people can be in the room at a time, and no visitors are allowed between 2:30 and 4:30 everyday. Rules are rules we hear.

2. Today Roy Jones and Grant Larsen stopped by and I asked them to give Dad another blessing. Like I said in the last post, he complained today that the pain was worse than before. So we thought that he needed another blessing. I knew my Dad would never ask for one, since he would never want to ask for help or inconvenience anyone either. But I walked in after and he just cried saying how thankful he was for the blessing and the second they laid their hands on his head and started the blessing, he felt peace and calmness. The power of the Lord is evident in my Dad's life. We are so blessed to have the gift of the priesthood during this time. Grant also brought him some books on tape for my Dad to listen to on his ipod and his music player. When we left tonight he asked for us to turn it on for him.

3. We got him to eat something tonight! This is so exciting! All day he said everything sounded so gross to him and he didn't even want to drink since it hurt so bad to swallow. Well as some know, my Dad LOVES mashed potatoes, especially fake ones since that is what he grew up on. And he also loves meatloaf. So that is what they brought him for dinner. So he told us that this sounded good. So he ate and swallowed the meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy very well. He washed it down with some orange juice. We then brushed his teeth. We sat him up to almost 90 degrees. He said this hurt his head really really bad, but he did well.

4. He is getting another cat scan at 6:30 AM and will be done around 8:30 AM or so. This will show if he has made any progress. We will let you know the results. They want to keep him in Critical Care for at least until Thursday. Then if he makes progress, he will be moved to a regular room in the hospital for another 3 days or so.

5. We have been blessed by so many friends, neighbors and loved ones, who have stopped by to bring us food. This means so much to us. We just had a dinner of completely prepared food. Thank you so much.

Thanks again for checking up on our sweet father.

Love Steph and Linds