Up and down.

Today is Dad’s 18th day in the ICU.

Every day I am amazed that he’s come this far.

I am so thankful for every day he’s here and so sad for every day I took for granted, for every day he took for granted.

Yes, there are fewer wires, fewer tubes and fewer needle sticks, but there is a very long road ahead of him.

I am learning to stop judging his progress hour by hour. The roller coaster is too much for me.

I’m trying to look at things day by day. And from that view, some days are better than others and in different ways….

He’s off the heart pump (hooray!)

His face is sunken, drawn and his skin is grey (panic).

He’s off the insulin pump and they’re going long-acting insulin injections (yippee!).

His Friday night cage match with a nurse got him an injection of Haldol and hard restraints (crap).

He knows who the president is (yea!), but doesn’t have the “sensitivity filter” on enough to realize that making a KKK joke is really inappropriate (stomach twist).

He looks better today and has been sitting up and even ate most of his lunch (halelujah!).

He doesn’t know what city he is in, remember that he’s in a hospital, or why he’s here (ugh.)

He knows I’m his daughter, but thinks I’m my sister (I know there’s a redneck inbreeding joke somewhere in there that is ripe to be cracked and that Dad would really appreciate it).

The path forward is really up to him at this point. He has breathing treatments and exercises to do. He needs to be moving more. He needs to want to get out of here. But if he doesn’t know where he is, how is he supposed to get out of it? We’re trying to pull him out of a downward spiral with cement snowshoes on.

So, for now, we hope, we push, cajole, prod, and remind. We have the TV on all the time so he remembers there’s a world out there he needs to get back into. We give him lots of tough love and hand holding.

Damn this is hard.