PT Woes

Dad had PT yesterday, after which he told me, “They call this physical therapy, but I call it physical torture.” Other than it making him miserable afterward, I think it went well. He sat up with his back brace on with his legs over the edge of the bed for ten minutes. Today he refused to do OT or PT because he was in too much pain. All of last night and today he was in a ton of pain. The same thing happened over the 24 hours following his first session with OT earlier in the week. I’m reminded of my daughter Hope’s NICU stay (she was a preemie). Two steps forward, one-and-three-quarters steps back. She would have a really good day of taking her meals by mouth, and the next two days would have to have everything through her NG tube because she was too worn out from working hard. I’m hoping that’s what’s going on with Dad today, too. Hard physical work yesterday, now he needs to recuperate. It’s so hard to know what’s normal in this situation.

Today in addition to general pain and all the injury pain, he’s been complaining about abdominal pain. Pray that the cause of that is identified and resolved as soon as possible.

We’re still waiting for the clots to break up, and he’s still being treated with a couple different forms of blood thinners. He’s still being treated as if he has pneumonia. No word yet on the next foot surgery.

Each day on the route I drive to the hospital, I pass a bunch of fields where different vegetables are growing. On one of the first days of this week I noticed that there were tiny corn stalks beginning to grow in the first field I pass. They were probably about six inches tall. I’m pretty sure the very next day they had doubled in height. And more ever since. For some reason, seeing these plants thrive day after day as I drive to and from the hospital to see my dad—who is either asleep or in pain, or occasionally lucid and visiting with us—causes me to pause, to reflect, and to pray. I haven’t been able to pinpoint why, but those rapidly growing plants make me feel both troubled and encouraged. I often wonder, how tall will they be when my dad leaves the hospital? Where will my dad be in his journey to recovering when that corn is harvested? What will this field look like when he comes home? It’s strange, the ways our minds find to mark the passage of time.

Today, I wondered why I keep noticing those darned stalks of corn. And this time as I continued my route that has already been programmed into autopilot, I prayed. As I prayed, I was reminded of scriptures. The Lord is the one giving life to those plants. He knows how quickly they will grow, even if the farmer caring for them doesn’t (Mark 4:26-29). God causes the growth (1 Corinthians 3:7). He is the one who will breathe life into all the broken parts of my dad’s body and cause healing and growth in this process (Ezekiel 37:1-14).

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