This is Brian playing balloon games with other recovering patients. He will be home early tomorrow afternoon. Pat

It's Thursday morning, May 7, and Brian's last full day in any medical facility. He was scheduled to leave in a week but spent much of yesterday "negotiating" with each of the people (medical and therapudic) who had to sign off. We also managed to leapfrog over the assigned in-home nursing and physical and occupational therapy to get immediately into a cardio-rehab at Pres-Healthplex where he will get all of that and where we already have a membership. He eschewed the at home wheel chair but will come home with a fanny-pack oxygen set-up which they expect he will only need for a week or so. While Brian has been getting thinner and thinner, I've been getting fatter and fatter. For some days after the attack, my routine, when I left the hospital, was to come home and eat frosting out of a can while watching John Stewart re-runs. Then my sister came and fixed me amazing gormet meals and now I'm eating mostly pizza and cake. And, while Brian's brain seems to have come through all of this, as he says, "no more damaged than it was before," I can't say the same for my own. This morning when I came downstairs, it seemed quite chilly and I discovered that I'd left the front door wide open. When I cast back, I realized that when I must have done that was yesterday morning before I left for the hospital. This is the third time in the last few weeks that I've left the house with the door standing open ---extreme, even for me. Happily never when Rosie was here. Rosie had been home without company for a few hours each day so she had taken to finding ever more interesting things to destroy which ranged from much of my underwear to the coffee table (I kid you not--she chewed off hunks of the thick wooden leg to the coffee table). So, she's temporarily back at the boxer zoo. My appreciation of how much Brian usually fixed around this complicated place increases by the day. Since he has been gone, there has been an irrigation ditch flood which came up to the front door, a toilet flood, a broken garbage disposal, a mower flat tire and a few other things which I've forgotten. I think I will take a few last day photos of Brian today and post them tororrow and then stop posting on the blog unless someting totally surprising happens. Brian knows how many well wishers he has and both of us are truly grateful. Thank you all. Pat

It's Monday morning, May 4th. When I started this blog, I understood that it would be easy for people to reach by going to google and entering my name as patfrieder. During the whole time I was writing every day that wasn't possible. But today, when I was just about to write my last entry, I find that it is possible now. So you can go to google and enter my name in the search box and when the list comes up, the second option says patfrieder blog. Click on it and when you get a screen with choices, click "view blog." Because it is now easy, I'll continue using this way of communicating for a while. Brian is getting stronger by the hour. Not surprisingly, now that he is free to move, he is doing more than he is officially allowed to do, moving in his room without calling the nurse and, I think, without using the walker. When I'm there he uses it but I notice that when I arrive it is in some unhandy corner so.... He is taking both occupational and physical therapy. It is remarkable that he was so disabled by this--down to such things as not being able to tie a shoe or get into a car (they have half a car in the therapy room). It's also remarkable how fast things come back once he does them properly. It's as if the memory of how to do things went away and magically reappears when the motion is completed (with the help of the therapist). He is reading and has completed two books this week end. He is enjoying the visits with friends and you are all welcome to come as you like. He's got classes (arm class and leg class etc) in the mid morning and early afternoon but is free at lunch and late afternoon, evening. He says he is coming home by friday but I doubt it. Deb and Braden have left and my own life will settle soon. I hope. Yours, Pat