Try Not To Get Sick During What is Effectively a Holiday Weekend

[wolf]

The whole process of bringing Mom home has been much more involved than expected.

It started with her being unable to make the walk from the car into the apartment. She covered about 10 feet of out 40 and sank to the ground (slowly and without injury), unable to proceed further. I called an ambulance and they got her safely installed on the living room couch. She hasn't the strength to make it up the steps, which is just as well as it means I don't have to figure out how to get her back down them.

Some of the home care stuff is getting put together, we've had visits from the nurses, and a health aide should be coming tomorrow to help her with bathing and so on. Sometime this week should see the first visit from the in-home physical therapist, who is apparently the one in charge of ordering things like wheelchairs, hospital beds, and so on.

Although I hadn't expected to need to do so, I've taken at least this week off work to try to get a better handle on things. My sister will likely make arrangements for a care aide in the evening to get mom settled and into bed so I can get back to work. My sister leaves tomorrow, so I'll be on my own after that.

I'm tired, and I'm heading for sleep now. For those of you not that familiar with my personal habits, that's about 5 hours earlier than my bedtime.

[limey]

It looks like this is going to be a difficult time for the both of you - wishing you both the strength and sense of humour needed to get you through it to the better times ahead.

[Clodfobble]

Good call on the week off from work, wolf. It's sometimes hard to see how much of your time/energy these things require until it's too late and you've worked yourself to exhaustion.

[Elspode]

Sorry to hear about the disruption, Wolf. It is gonna be tough when you're the only one in charge after Sis leaves. I hope your mother knows how blessed she is to have children who care...I have a friend whose mother is in rehab right now, and my friend earnestly wishes that the woman would die.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That sounds bad Els, but it could be some compassion fueling it.

My Moms been in the Hospital/rehab loop, a bunch of times this year.
I asked my Brother, who lives with her, "Is this the point where from here on, when she dies, we'll all say it's for the best?"
He understood, saying it was a fair question.
He also said, yes.

There comes a point when the person you love isn't having fun anymore.
Every day is a struggle, painful for them and everyone who loves them.
Of course you do everything humanly possible to make their life as pain free as you can.
But it's a heavy blow to their ego, self image, pride, that you're sort of helpless to affect, no matter how much you love and respect them.

The natural progression. The natural order of things. To some, their chosen Deity's will.
But that doesn't change the fact that it sucks..... for the caregiver and recipient.




Wolf is a strong woman, but she's doing a really tough job and is going to need all the good vibes we can send her.

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

That sounds bad Els, but it could be some compassion fueling it.

I only wish that it *was* compassion, Bruce, but it isn't...she hates her mother, she resents her mom being demanding, petulant and unappreciative. She feels that mom is manipulative and weak. She resents having to deal with her mother's decline and feels that her mom should have been better prepared financially and practically for her later years. In short...no compassion, just hostility and resentment. Mom isn't *that* sick, as in "death is imminent" sick. No, this is only going to get worse, and it pains me to hear it.

I know the woman is no saint, but jeez...at the end of life, your family members deserve respect and assistance, even if it is inconvenient, even if they weren't your favorite person to begin with. Hell, strangers deserve that.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Gotcha.....daughters and wives....once they turn on ya, you might as well be dead...

[wolf]

This week's adventure has involved my mother being in congestive heart failure. She's on a diuretic now, potassium, and a new heart medication, and seems to be resolving.

I very nearly had to resort to bludeoning her into unconsciousness to make her unable to refuse consent for ambulance transport, but we finally negotiated things down to a voluntary trip to her PCP.

Next time, I go for the club.

[monster]

Oh dear. I'm not really sure what else to say, but it sounds like she has the right spirit, if aimed in the wrong direction. Good luck.

[wolf]

I worked last Saturday night. Typically I work 1600 - 2400. Because I had something I had to do on Sunday morning, my midnight coverage offered to come in early ... sometime between 2200 and 2300. She came in at 2200. I arrived home to find the wrong lights on in the house ... there are certain ones that momwolf typically leaves on. Momwolf was in a chair, slumped over to one side. She was breathing, but unreponsive to anything but painful stimuli. I tested her blood sugar. It was 34 ("normal" is usually around 100). This isn't the first low blood sugar episode we've had, but I usually come onto this scene when momwolf is confused, but conscious, and I'm able to get some OJ or bananas into her to bring her blood sugar up. I called 911 and the EMTs transported her to the ER. When they tested her sugars in the bus, it had dropped further, down to 22. They gave her a load of stat glucose and got her conscious and talking by the time they reached the ER. I followed along behind and spent a lot of time sitting with her, first in a hallway, and then in a curtain area until she was poked and prodded and tested and ready to be sent home at around 0400.

So, basically, my shift coverage's desire for two additional hours of OT (and my not caring about losing two hours of OT) saved my mother's life.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Do you think she's putting herself in these situations intentionally, or confusion and clouded judgment?

[wolf]

This one turned out to be a problem with her medications. My mother has been a non-insulin dependent diabetic for 20+ years. She has taken the same medication and dosage throughout that time. Since the infection and surgery in July 2006, she has lost about 60 pounds. In December or January, she had an incident where her blood sugars dropped down into the 40s. Her doctor cut her medication dosing from twice a day to once a day as a consequence of that. Before this past weekend's incident, we had already made an appointment with her endocrinologist who follows her for her hypothyroidism. I have been bugging her for years to also let him manage her NIDDM, but she was used to her old PCP doing this, and keeps forgetting that her current PCP is, in my estimation, a nice lady, but a gaping idiot as a doctor, or at least as a diagnostician. This was something that our old PCP was darn near magickal about, so pretty much everyone looks like a knucklehead when stacked up against him.

On Saturday, she ate more than adequately ... eggs and toast for breakfast, an Ensure in the afternoon for a snack, and roasted chicken for dinner. Everything points to the meds being the cause of this one.

Of course, now that we know she's not dying, she's milking it for all it's worth.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Cool, if she's milking it then she's still on the ball.

[richlevy]

I hope she's feeling better soon.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by richlevy

I hope she's feeling better soon.

Yea, really. What else is there to say.We finally had to put our mom into an assisted living home, tough stuff. Good luck.