Rehabilitation

It's time to give an overdue update on my uncle's situation. I finally saw him yesterday when I brought my parents to the D.C. area so they can be with him every day in the rehab center/nursing home in this last month before they go back to Brazil. It was a whirlwind trip, I drove them (and the boys) to Maryland on Sunday night and came back yesterday afternoon because I needed to "babysit" overnight for our friends.

We left pretty late on Sunday because my dad spent the day cleaning our garage, the play house/shed, the car, etc... there was no stopping him! So it took us sometime to get out of the house and drive to the rehab center. When we got there, around 11:30, my uncle was not in the room, he was having physical therapy. We were walking down the hall looking for the gym when we saw him being wheeled in our direction in his wheel chair. It was not easy to see him so helpless! He looks well, the huge scar across the right side of his face/forehead is fully healed. His hair is cropped really short, but the real shock is the closed right eye and the expressionless face. He can move his left arm well, but not the right one (the arm that broke). He moves his legs a bit, but not too much. And he cannot talk out loud, just whisper.

The boys were shy, as they always are, but my uncle immediately remarked that they were shocked. I don't think they were shocked as much as puzzled and full of questions. "Why can't he open his eye?" "Why can't he move?" "Why is he in this chair?" And so on and so forth. He was going to leave for the appointment with the orthopedic doctor, so we asked for his lunch, my mom and dad fed him and we saw him off in a van driven by a nice Hispanic woman (thankfully so because my dad went along and he doesn't speak English, but we Portuguese speakers can communicate quite well in Spanish).

Last week we learned for sure that his brain tumor (although big -- 5 cm) was benign. We suspected it, but my mom never had the courage to ask my aunt (over the phone) about the biopsy results. They had previously thought that uncle would need a pacemaker, but he actually doesn't -- he just needs one of the veins to be unobstructed (perhaps with a catheter, we don't know). And the results of yesterday's visit to the orthopedist were also positive -- his arm is healing well!

I hope that my parents' presence there can help, particularly my dad's since my uncle is his younger brother. They were sad to say goodbye to the boys, but we'll see each other in the last two weekends of the month, before they go back on the 28th.

This visit to my uncle made me think that it would be pretty important to have a living will. It must be extremely hard to be "stuck" in an alien body while (mostly) fully aware and mentally able. I hope he recovers fully. I haven't had time to research about it, but I know that the "side-effects" of brain surgery are pretty devastating -- and we can see that first hand on uncle -- but, hopefully, they can be reversed with intense therapy and time.

It was tiring to drive back by myself. The boys were watching DVDs and I felt sleepy at times. And then we had two (very nice) boys to care for in the evening -- the hardest part for me was having to speak English during dinner and after and not be able to fully relax.

We were welcomed by two huge boxes containing the books and materials for cyber-schooling, but I'll need to write about that separately, probably in the other blog.

Well, I have to go to bed, I'm tired. I'm feeling a bit better already, my friends. My heartfelt thanks for all your kind words. I'll discuss the cyberschooling issue in due time, Anjali. Great to hear from you again, Prisca! Your comment was great, motherissues, I also appreciate when other bloggers are honest about their overwhelming times, it does help a lot to realize we're all humans and undergoing some of the same hardships . Dawn and Lucy, thanks for being so supportive as always! "The internets" is just wonderful!