Finished Inpatient Rehab

Health Update

Really good news, after a weekend of rest and a few days of therapy, Stephany/Mom has been approved for discharge from the hospital, effective today. After two weeks there, she is ready to go home. Her pain is reduced from pre-surgery levels and she is regaining some of her mobility.

Her decline in health, in particular the several weeks prior to hospitalization, has had her family very, very concerned. We are hopeful that the care and treatment she received the past two weeks, notably the herniated disc surgery, have given her the physical, mental and spiritual boost that she so needed.

Even though her Parkinson's will continue to advance, we believe she will now be much more comfortable and stable, and that some of the recent decline can even be reversed. We are already seeing signs of that. A big focus will be on managing (she might say micromanaging!) her food and liquid intake, and she will now have home health care, including P/T.

She will be ready for some visits beginning tomorrow or Friday. To coordinate, please contact John at 816-630-7708 (home).

We will keep you posted here on how she is doing. Thanks again for all of your notes of encouragement over the past two weeks, we are all so grateful.

Moving to Rehab

Health Update:

Stephany (Mom) is slowly recovering. Her pain level is up and down, she is more mentally alert than two days ago, and really good news, her appetite has increased and she is eating more regularly. It is too soon to tell how much the surgery is helping reduce her leg pain as she is still in pain from the surgery itself.

After consulting with her medical team, the decision was made yesterday to keep her in the hospital for her post-surgery rehab. North Kansas City Hospital has a reputable acute inpatient rehabilitation unit, which her doctors and PTs believe she needs given the added rehab challenges she will face with her Parkinson's.

She was moved there last night and began rehab this morning. How long she stays there will be based on her rate of progress, but they anticipate about a week, give or take a couple of days.

It is a little more relaxed than the hospital, i.e. she can wear street clothes. However, her rehab program will be fairly extensive and intense, about three hours a day. She has requested no visitors during this next phase, as she really needs to rest when she's not in therapy. She wants to recover enough to return home, and we are optimistic she will be ready for visitors at that point.

We have been reading her all of your emails, FB comments and other messages. She wants to pass along, "Thank you for the hugs and kisses." She is feeling the love.

Any questions, etc. please let us know. We will post another update as her discharge date approaches, or if there are any other notable developments.

Thanks again, so very much, for your care and concern.

John, Ashley, Blake

Post-Surgery Update

(From Ashley Hughes): Mom's back surgery went well, her surgeon is optimistic it will greatly reduce her leg pain. The surgery occurred very late in the day so she didn't get up to her hospital room until 8:30 p.m. She was having a tough time the first hour back in the room as she was so groggy and confused, but she is now recovering more easily from the anesthesia, and resting. We hope she gets a good night's sleep, John will be with her in the room overnight. Tomorrow she should be up and walking with help from PT. She will not be discharged until Thursday at the earliest. Thanks again for all of your kind words and prayers, we really appreciate them.

Update on Stephany's Health - 6.16.19

Dear all,

This is Stephany’s daughter Ashley, reaching out with an update about my mom and her health.

Late Wednesday night mom was admitted to North Kansas City Hospital for dehydration and a UTI. She is currently resting comfortably there, having received treatment for these problems.

In addition to her advancing Parkinson’s, including some cognitive decline, she has a herniated disc that has been causing extreme leg pain for months. Having exhausted all non-surgical options, this weekend the decision was made to keep her in the hospital for surgery to repair it.

A  microdiscectomy  is scheduled for Tuesday, and the plan is for her to return home on Wednesday or Thursday to begin rehab and start eating, drinking and moving much more than had been the case before her hospital stay.

Her significant other John and I, and her good friend Suzanne, have been at the hospital with her, and my brother Blake is arriving tomorrow. Any notes or messages you want to share, we know it would really lift her spirits to hear from her cherished family and friends at this time, and receive your care and support.

Moving forward we will post health updates here and try to link them to Facebook as well. You can also reach me at ashley.hughes@outlook.com, John at tbirdguy02@gmail.com and Blake at blake.hughes@yahoo.com. Mom is not able to check her phone or email at this time, though I am picking up her voicemails.

Many thanks,

Ashley

Having a Daddy

I'm so excited because today I finally overcame inertia, not to speak of gross procrastination.  I should get a prize for procrastination.  Today I wrote the introduction for my new book, (working title), Every Girl Needs a Good Daddy.  It's about a girl growing up during the Dust Bowl days in southwestern Kansas and how her daddy marched every step of the way with her.

Anyway, when I finished writing the introduction to this new book, a story popped into my head about girls and their daddies.

A few years back, I was working in the inner city with some kids in a friend program.  I was supposed to go there and help them individually with their schoolwork, but I decided to run a little gifted class instead.  I would have five or six students and, of course, they were eager and capable of doing anything I asked of them.

One day, I decided to teach them how to speak in front of a group.  In order for them to get the idea of what to do, I demonstrated.  The topic was "A Favorite Person" and I went to the front of the room, surveyed the group until I had eye contact with each child, then proceeded to talk about my father for three minutes.

When I finished, they clapped and I bowed, then said, "Now who wants to be next?"  Vanessa approached the front of the room, surveyed the group until she had eye contact, then began:  "Miz Hughes, do you mind if I say something before I start?"

"Of course, Vanessa.  Go ahead."

"Well, I just wanted to thank you for telling us about your daddy because none of us have a daddy so we don't know what it would be like."

"You're welcome," was all I could manage to reply.

Welcome to my blog!

I hope you will like it here and will have fun reading what I have written for you.  My passion is writing and I want to share that interest with you.  Feel free to pass it on to others you think might enjoy it.  I’m a bookaholic, too.  I just can’t help it.  I love books; therefore, I also love authors.  Even though I don’t personally know most of the authors I read, I feel like I know them by the time I finish their book.

Authors are my mentors and have been my entire life.  Since I was a small child, I loved going to the library.  I loved the way it smelled; I loved touching the books; and I loved the illustrations.  The artwork transported me far, far away from my hometown of Liberal, Kansas and I envisioned myself in the pictures, alongside the characters in the book.

Each week, as I approached the check-out desk, clutching my library card in one hand and half a dozen books in the other arm, I knew I was in for an encounter with the scary librarian, Miss Jessie Jordan.  Dowdy Miss Jordan was tall, slender, and wore her brown hair in a bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a beige shirtwaist dress, grandmotherly shoes, and looked over her wire-rimmed glasses at me with a scowl.  Then she began her weekly lecture.

“Books are your friends, Stephany.  You must treat them gently. Don’t turn down any pages, and  always wash your hands before touching them.”  There must be a reason I remember her stern admonishments decades later.  She made an impression on me, though, because, to this day, I wash my hands before I pick up a book.  I also have a huge collection of bookmarks!  Sometimes, when I dare to turn down a page in my own book, I feel her disapproving look.  Now that’s what I call a life-long impression!

In my next blog, I’ll tell you about a book I’ve written.  I think you’ll like reading about raising a well-adjusted child.

What Love's All About

He stands over her grave.  It's Christmas.  This is the first time in fifty-two years that she won't celebrate with him.  He twirls the rose in his rough, tanned hands.  Every day, he goes to the floral shop and buys her a red rose. Every day, he comes here to give it to her.

He places the delicate flower on her newly-dug grave, just like he has every day since she left.  Then he walks over to the bed of his pick-up and lifts out a chair.  He places the chair beside the brown clumps of earth.

 He starts to talk, just like every day since she left.  He tells her what happened yesterday; he shares news from people he saw the day before.  She needs to keep up on the family.

Everything said, he gets up from the chair, leans down and scatters the petals from roses of other days on top of the dirt.  He's making a blanket of roses for her.

"I love you, babe."

He walks slowly to the truck and places the chair back in its place.  He'll need it again tomorrow.  He gets into the cab, turns on the engine, glances at her resting place, and silently promises to return tomorrow.

We took him home-baked cookies a few weeks after she went away.  He said he had lots of food in the freezer from the funeral.

"Do you want to see her picture when she was 19?" he asks.  She was a beauty.  No wonder he misses her.

"Here's an aerial view of the house we built together," he offers.  It's a pastoral scene with outbuildings and a modest home.

"You mean she did construction?" I inquired.

"Yes, right along with me.  Raised four boys, too," he offered.

We leave, somber for his loss.