May 11, 2011 Update

Dad is going GREAT!

Medicare has agreed to pay for Optimum Health Care to come by Mon,
Wed, Fri at 8:30am to change his dressings and repack. The male nurse
who came by today said he will be the same person who comes by each
time. His name is Manuel. He left his cell # with Dad and told him
he could also call him 24x7 if he needed help. He seems to think he
won't need to come by for more than 2 weeks - but said Medicare will
pay for as long as Dad needs him. Optimum has John, Tom and my cell #
numbers as contacts.

Dad is eating great, and doing well. We went and had coffee with this
tennis buddies today at 9:30am and everyone was happy to see him.

The next follow-up appt is Friday with Dr. Nichols.

I honestly think Dad could easily get to a point where he changed his
dressing (not packing) once a day and you just change the packing
daily if you wanted to go to that schedule after I leave. That would
get you down to one visit a day if you wanted. Whatever Tom and the
doctors decide is fine by me, I'm just throwing that idea out there
since the nurse seem to think twice a day (at this point) may be a bit
overkill. I do think the top dressing should be changed more often
then he suggested however.

Hope this helps. Like I said, he is doing well. He also told me he
did go to the dentist recently, but couldn't tell me exactly when. He
changed dentist when the last one charged hum $1,000 for a deep
cleaning - that was 18 months ago. A call to his current dentist
might be in order just to check the facts. I'll try and dig more.

...Jim