Today, I took my brother home to my house for the first time since he has been in the nursing home. It has been surprisingly easy, probably the fact that it wasn't raining or snowing helped. The nursing home gave me pull ups for him which it turned out he didn't even need. I had him sit in the car for 5 minutes while I ran in to get some extra ingredients for dinner. Then we went to the Northwestern University womens softball game. Because it was Easter, the crowd was fairly thin and it was easy to get him a seat on the first row of the bleachers so I didn't need to ask anyone to move. He was strong enough to make it to the stands from the car. It's really great that the American Disability Act has forced establishments to build ramps, it really helped in this case. I was surprised to see another physically disabled person in a wheelchair at the same game.
It was good to get him fresh air and just out in society. My husband and daughter eventually joined us and it was just a nice, brief family kind of thing.
Then we went back to my house and I sat him in a chair with arms and had him watch a basketball on TV until my husband and daughter returned. By that time friends had come over and we had a pleasant dinner. My husband is now driving my brother back to the nursing home. I am pretty tired, to say the least, but feel very glad that we all put in the extra effort today, it wasn't that big a deal.
No comments:
Post a Comment