A brief update

A friend just asked me about Henry and I realized I haven't posted here for a while. It can be hard to keep up sometimes (with life just moving along at a break-neck pace) and this week has been especially hard. I learned that one of my clients, a woman from Mississauga who happens to be a nurse at Trillium Health Centre, was killed in an auto collision last weekend. She was still pregnant at the time and was due to deliver around the end of April. I can not tell you how profoundly this has hit me. Her partner is at Sunnybrook with serious injuries and I hope he has recovered enough to be able to attend the wake tonight and tomorrow as well as the funeral on Monday. He will need these opportunities to work through his grief. Doug has agreed to come with me to the wake tonight so that I have a support network of my own.

In any case, with that going on I have forgotten to keep you informed of changes happening here. Now that Henry is home again I think Christena is understanding why we encouraged her to allow him to stay in long-term care. It is more of a full-time job than she realized. This is especially true given that most nights, regardless of being both "tranquilized" AND "sedated" (with two different medications) he does not sleep through the night. When he doesn't sleep at night, neither does she . . . or any other adult in the house (Fergus and Quinn seem to be able to sleep through ANYTHING). Henry is most confused at night and so is louder and angrier at that time of day. It is certainly difficult for both of them.

She is also having trouble with the idea that he can't be left alone. At all! And this has happened a couple of times this week. I can't seem to get through to her. This morning I was still sleeping when I heard her come up and ask Fergus to tell me that she had gone out to the drug store for something. She has him locked in downstairs (I can get in easily, but he can't get out because we know he has a tendency to wander) and left him sleeping on the chesterfield. I couldn't do that with the boys and she needs to learn that she can't do that with him. It's like leaving a toddler home alone. I just went down to sit with him while she was gone -- even though he was sleeping -- in case he woke up.

Henry started his day program this week. It is like day care and it gives Christena a break two days a week; not to mention that it's a social and stimulating environment for him. We have someone from the local Red Cross come to pick him up at 8 in the morning. They feed him and keep him entertained and then bring him back around 3:3o in the afternoon. This is on Tuesdays and Fridays and is to give her some time to go out and run errands or catch up on lost sleep. He didn't mind going and she felt like she got a lot accomplished.

Physically he is in the same place he has been since he got out of hospital. We are hopeful that we can keep the pneumonia away with him being nebulized 6 times a day. We'll have to wait and see.

For those who celebrate Christian Easter, Happy Easter. For those who celebrate the Pagan "Hiding and finding of eggs brought by a rabbit (the symbol of fertility)," good egg-hunting to you!