So, some good news, everyone. My father had a follow-up doctor's appointment on Friday, one which let him get some time with his elder grandchild, and daughter-in-law, and all that. My mother drove him up, naturally. I was busy teaching. Apparently the get-the-family-together side of things went really well, with my sister-in-law and my mother talking for quite a long time ``in a normal voice so I couldn't hear them'', according to my father.
The real point was getting him to the doctor's office, though, and the verdict came in: he's no longer home-bound. He's free to go out and do what he feels like, within reason. So, no lugging around fifty-pound bags of concrete for a couple more months. (True cute thing: the fact he had been doing that a few months ago was used by his doctor as a reason to cancel a planned stress test. After all, he came through that in great shape, so, what could be wrong?) And he's been taken off two of his medications, leaving him with just the two remaining. This would be just after he picked up ninety-day refills on his prescriptions, he would point out, and probably has already.
Besides being cleared to leave the house, he's also cleared to drive on his own. He so far has pretty mild plans, to take his truck out to get gas and see if it still runs after two months of laying fallow, and then driving to his next doctor's appointment in a week-plus, but I suspect that's going to change when he gets to thinking about it. My mother's already fingered him for a ride to the airport in a couple weeks.
Also, he's allowed to do a little of the home-repair-and-such work that he'd been doing for years now. Again, not heavy stuff, or active stuff, or very fast stuff, but, what he can do without excessive strain is open again. So he's in a better spirit than he's letting on.
Trivia: George Westinghouse's first railroad-related patents were for a ``car replacer'' which put derailed trains back on the tracks quickly, and for a steel ``frog'' which prevented derailing at junctions. Both were licensed by railroads, then improved by the companies, to form new and royalty-free patents. Source: Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, And The Race To Electrify The World, Jill Jonnes.
Currently Reading: Worlds Vast And Various: Stories, Gregory Benford.