Family Night Dinner

Maunalani has a special family event each month; for March it was tonight, Family Night Dinner. Each resident can invite 2 guests; I signed Dad up for 2 guests, Curtis & I went since Lori had a class. There were probably about a dozen residents and their guests there. Dinner was served in courses, starting with a mixed green salad with tofu and vinaigrette dressing, followed by grilled salmon with steamed pak choi and mushrooms. Dessert was vanilla ice cream.

Dad contemplates his salad.

The entree: salmon with pak choi, mushrooms, and rice.

Dad left dinner after about eating only about half his ice cream and hardly any of his entree. He isn't able to eat a green salad any more. Dad was tired, perhaps because he did almost 2 hours of physical & occupational therapy. He nodded off during dinner several times. His okole was also sore from sitting in the wheelchair.

Since CNA Sylvestre was able to get Dad out of bed for breakfast, Zhanna was able to do his physical therapy in the on-site gym. Zhanna started him on the parallel bars to see if he was able to stand with help from his arms; he wasn't even able to get himself out of the wheelchair. So Zhanna worked with him on therapy to strengthen his leg and core muscles. 

Dad tries to stand up with help from Zhanna.

Dad works on strengthening his leg muscles by squeezing the green ball.

Dad pulls back on the yellow band, while Curtis provides encouragement.

That was hard work!

After PT, Dad went back to his room for lunch. He decided he wanted to eat seated in the wheelchair; he fell asleep while he was eating. After lunch, he got back in to bed to wait for his occupational therapy session.


Karen the occupational therapist came by after lunch, since Dad said he was too tired to sit up at the edge of the bed, Karen brought some weights for him to use while in bed. He curled a 1 pound bar from his waist up to his shoulders, lifted it out in front of him, and raised it over his head. He used small, 1 pound dumbbells doing curls and twists to strengthen his wrists. He also practiced rolling to his sides which helps both in getting out of bed as well as moving to assist the CNAs when they have to change various things. We found out tomorrow is Karen's last day of a 13-week contract working at Maunalani; she returns to Alberta, Canada, & just a few more weeks of snow before things warm up there.  

Before physical therapy started this morning we walked around while we were waiting. From the dining room we saw a lone house on the ridge across the valley. And down in Palolo Valley we saw the substation and some distribution lines running part way up the ridge.



On the way to the gym we saw a praying mantis waiting by the elevator.


The landing outside the gym looks down on the lanai where Popokilani usually hangs out; she was nowhere to be today. We tried to go out there but there was a light drizzle and it was windy and too cold for Dad.


Curtis & I went out to breakfast this morning since we would be spending the middle of the day with Dad and were going to have dinner with him later. We went to Zippy's, but I had forgotten my phone at home so there are no photos.

The error on the refrigerator came back this morning. I checked the thermometer and it was still 60 degrees F. Tonight Curtis called to tell me he remembered Mom having a similar problem; when the repair guy came it turns out it was an ice build up in the freezer that was blocking the air flow to the refrigerator. I did a quick check and found a couple areas with ice build up. I'll be cleaning those out tomorrow morning to see if that's what's causing the problem.  

Today the City said that there was a data loss at the Licensing division caused by a hard drive failure. Scans of documents presented to get driver licenses were lost for people who applied between February 25th & September 15th of last year. Fortunately I got my license on February 17th so I won't be affected; unfortunately Curtis got his in August. About 66,000 people may be affected, the City won't know for sure for the next couple of months while they verify exactly what was lost.

Happy Birthday to Kirk!