We passed the 6-months-post-stroke mark a week ago, which is somewhat of a milestone on the  recovery timeline. Improvements are still expected for another half a year or more, but at a diminishing rate. My dad has come a very long way since the last update. After returning him home, we spent three months months diligently taking him to near-daily appointments with PTs and speech therapists who continued to whip him into shape. It definitely helped.

My dad has more sustained attention and energy, especially towards the end of the day, and is pretty capable around the house; making meals, stacking wood, fixing little things and operating the wood stove. He even taught me something recently when I helped him install a part he bought for a broken lamp. Over the winter he successfully got back to lap swimming in the pool, ice skating, biking, and skiing. Yesterday we put the dock down. Welcome spring!

The deficits, while much more subtle nowadays, are still present. It could be hard to tell what he’s been through from a glance, but slight personality shifts and inabilities to reason through more complicated things are apparent. Cell phone operation also remains rough but he does seem to have answering phone calls down and sends texts some with variable success. He is still not driving though. These last two things are the biggest hurdles to overcoming isolation at home. We owe a huge amount of gratitude to everyone who has stepped up, come out to the house or coordinated ways to include in him activities. Some are even continuing to do it on a weekly basis. Thank you all.

While my dad is executing individual tasks with decent success around the house, the big picture coordination of home maintenance and meal planning/prep are not quite reliably within his wheelhouse yet, at least done day after day. He also isn’t able to initiate enough things to do on a daily basis to keep busy, spending a lot of time stewing around the house if left without guidance. He also recently got lost when out on a solo bike ride, but proved himself savvy enough to get help finding his way back. Keeping his leash tight enough for safety but loose enough to allow for continued growth and independence is a delicate act.

With all of this in mind, it seems plausible that my dad will never be able to live fully independently again. Because of this, I’ve been pursuing our home share idea more seriously as a way for him and others in similar situations to stay out of assisted living facilities, pooling resources to hire in what they need and keeping an eye on each other along the way. It would also save everyone involved a lot of money. Please take a moment to follow the link below to see what we are trying to do, then share it with anyone that you think might be a potential lead! I am certain that the right matches for a situation like this exist, but the difficult part will be finding them. It’s unlikely that they are patiently waiting at home for an opportunity like this to arise, but rather on the brink of entering, or already in, assisted living and looking for a better alternative. To be clear, this will not be a live-in caregiver situation. The current vision is an elder home share agreement with basic help hired in for things like transportation, cooking and cleaning, as needed. Please reach out to us at johno.barns@gmail.com or 518-572-6952 if you have any potential leads that might prefer a phone call or house visit over a google doc link.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jmBjkdllHXepSrxxFgq4SVASG7V91VUS/view?usp=sharing

Cheers,

Luke (and Larry)