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Sunny Barrow

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Sunny Barrow Slide Show

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Here is a slide show of Barrow on June 21.

Sunny Barrow

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This is a new post with an image. I'm hopeful that the image will show in the PDF?

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Dear Family & Friends -Please notice that I have pretty much limited this email to Abbie's generation. Please feel free to forward to my cousins. I will send regular updates - hopefully shorter than this and the last email. If any of my cousins want to get the updates, please have them let me know directly so that I can add them to my email list.

I am now home and this is your first official update of Abbie's progress. She never wanted to go to Healthcare but she seems to have accepted the fact that it is the place for her to be. She says good things about the care she is receiving at La Hacienda. That is a good thing, but I do not think she makes it particularly easy for them to help her in the healing process. Also she has some huge memory issues which she can not do anything about. That may or may not get better with time as the anesthesia works its way out of her system.

Abbie is now living permanently at La Hacienda, the health care unit at La Posada. We finished the last of the move while I was there. I tried as much as possible to get things Mom knows and loves with her in her new place. It now looks like her old place but smaller in size - family photos, art, etc. She has a large comfortable chair by the window when she is ready to learn to transfer to it from her wheelchair. There is a bird feeder outside her window which is frequented by many birds. She loves to sit and use her binoculars to look at them.

She likes to read the morning paper and has a book by Gary Paulson going on right now. She likes to watch Jeopardy and Who wants to be a Millionaire in the afternoon and a classical performance TV station at any time. (She also has a small DVD collection of ballet, ice skating, and the ocean rolling in ) She can not run her DVD player and sometimes not the TV either but the staff helps her with this. She listens to the local classical radio station.

She is doing daily physical and occupational therapy. She should also be doing speech therapy. Physical therapy is weight bearing, transferrance from wheelchair to toilet, etc., some very short distance walking with a gait belt(held by a therapist) and walker. Occupational therapy is dressing, things to take care of herself. She was doing some speech therapy because of some vocalization issues but Abbie did not think that had anything to do with her hip being broken and so she discontinued it. Susan remarked to me on a sudden improvement in Abbie's vocalization that was because of several sessions of speech therapy before it was stopped. As I left, I noticed once again her 'understandability' was going downhill again. The speech therapist explained to me that the speech problems we have noticed over the last year could have several causes - the most recent cause is intubation and surgery related issues. Causes awhile back have to do with how seniors begin to lose their voice and need to do work on their voice or they do lose their voices.

Abbie does not like to use her hearing aid. She says it does not work. She can not get it in by herself. I have turned it over to the nursing station. Julie(the weekday 7-4 nurse) is trying each day to get Abbie to let her put it in. Sometimes yes and sometimes no. This adds to Abbie's difficulties because she can not hear her fellow residents and feels left out of conversations.

She owns two pairs of glasses - both big and round. One is for distance and one for reading. She wears both pairs for reading and nothing for distance. Go figure. Sometimes she has to be reminded by the nurse to put her glasses on to read books and magazines. She is still getting three drops a day in her left eye to keep glaucoma at bay.

There was a care plan meeting while I was there to talk about Abbie's progress with therapy and things Abbie would like. Both Abbie and I were in attendance. La Hacienda will keep me posted as to any concerns or issues that they feel I (and we as family) should know about.

I have met most of the staff at La Hacienda who work with Abbie. Great folks!

She likes to go outside and there is a lovely patio out back of La Hacienda. I got her outside everyday - no matter how hot she wanted to go out even if only for 15 minutes.

Those of you that have phone schedule spots - please call only on your day or wait until the next one. And this next thing is really hard to do - but try not to ask her how she is. Trust me, I cant help myself sometimes either but she can NOT stand to be asked how she is doing. It sends her into a tailspin. See end of email for repeat of previous stuff on phone calls. If you dont need the repeated info, then you dont have to read it.

Again cards and little notes are probably the best thing for Abbie's spirits. Try to make them easy to open. She has a very difficult time getting things opened these days,

Address is: 700 S. La Posada Circle Rm 114 Green Valley, AZ 85614

Her cognitive lapses are fairly frequent and can be somewhat startling. These could be effects of the anesthesia and trauma from the accident itself. She has a difficult time talking to more than one person and often can only concentrate on a conversation/topic for a limited amount of time before she fades out.

Abbie continues to dress nicely with scarves and perfume the way she likes to. She is eating well - sometimes. She is sleeping well.

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