I've been wanting to blog for awhile, but I prefer to do it at 3am while I'm laying in my bed surfing before I go to bed. However, the laptop has been out of commission and my attention has been torn in so many directions at once lately that I can barely string together a sentence.
My mom's been in the hospital or a nursing home now since mid-December, with a 2-day break for Christmas. She finally came out of the hospital and was put in a nursing home about a week and a half ago.
While in the hospital she became delusional and ended up having a severe breathing attack and ended up on 100% oxygen ventilation with a BiPAP machine. Those last few days in the hospital had me on edge and truly scared, more than I was when she was in the ICU. In the ICU she was sick but lucid, and I was handling that okay. I expected her to be that sick. I was prepared for it. Seeing her get worse, specifically, seeing the essence of "her" disappear into delirum over that last week in the hospital scared the shit out of me. I watched it build over a period of days until one day she was actively hallucinating, fixed pinpoint pupils, and only semi-lucid. It was scary because she was like my father when he was dying-- there but not all there. I didn't want to watch my mom slip away like that.
The nurses and doctors seemed relatively unconcerned, and I finally insisted that they call in a neurologist. The neurologist was a smarmy old prick of the worst kind, and he didn't seem all that concerned either, citing my mother's mental health history (which never involved hallucinating or delirium). He and one of the nurses were of the consensus that she needed to get up and walk more to get better, which made me furious since she was completely batshit crazy and her oxygen sats were dropping when she walked even though she was on a high amount of oxygen. I knew she was doing her best, and they wanted to blame her for being sick.
The day she had to be put on ventilation, apparently one of the orderlies turned off her oxyegn tank and forgot about it, so she wasn't getting oxygen until she had an attack. That was the day she was supposed to be released, and no one told me about the oxygen tank mishap until my mother did. Seeing her breathing get to a crisis like that for seemingly no reason shook me. Just the day before the delirium seemed to have been passing.
They moved her to a nursing home the next day once they got her off of the ventilator, which I thought was really premature. Once they moved her, we were no longer hampered by visiting hours and rules about kids. For two weeks we'd been rushing to the hospital the second my husband got home and we'd take shifts-- one with my mom, one in the lobby herding the kid while he got stared for being a toddler. Finally we could go in a bit later, not rush, and take the baby which was good for us and for my mom.
The change in her when she went from the hospital to the nursing home was shockingly sudden and unexpected. I imagine it was because her medication was changed once she was discharged from the hospital. The hallucinations stopped, she was lucid, and for the first time in a month she was my mom again, not a sick shell of herself. I met her physical therapist who commented to me that my mom was working hard instead of bitching that she wasn't doing enough. Hearing that really did my heart some good.
Along with all of this, we've had my mom's very elderly dogs who have managed to track in about 3 tons of dirt and eat through a six-panel door and doorframe. Our house is for sale (still), and as the economy tanks, things get more and more grim. I've had to refuse all showings because we're simply not here and the house is in a shambles. We reduced our price by $10K, but to be honest, I'm ready to reduce it as low as we can go to just get out. The cost of gas and the stress of everything isn't worth it to me. I just want out of this house-- I'm sick of scrounging to pay a mortgage that was somehow affordable for the last 5 years and now has us stretched to the limit. I don't know what happened, really, except that taxes, insurance, and energy went up all at the same time.
All of this has been crashing down on me today. Then I spoke to my mom and they are trying to send her home on Saturday. She's on 5 liters of oxygen still 24/7-- I have no idea how the insurance company thinks she's going to make that workable. She's have to change tanks every 1-2 hours, and those things are dangerous and heavy. Her therapist yesterday said she expects that my mom needs at least 4 more weeks of rehab in the nursing home. Now the insurance is pulling the plug on that, wanting to send her a visiting nurse instead. My mom isn't ready to go home and she's said so.
So to cap all this off, I had a stress meltdown and ate about 17 million calories because I'm also stressed out that I didn't make it to the gym today and the whole process of getting in shape has taken 15 months so far, and this home stretch is just awful.
So just, fuck fuck fuck.
My mom's been in the hospital or a nursing home now since mid-December, with a 2-day break for Christmas. She finally came out of the hospital and was put in a nursing home about a week and a half ago.
While in the hospital she became delusional and ended up having a severe breathing attack and ended up on 100% oxygen ventilation with a BiPAP machine. Those last few days in the hospital had me on edge and truly scared, more than I was when she was in the ICU. In the ICU she was sick but lucid, and I was handling that okay. I expected her to be that sick. I was prepared for it. Seeing her get worse, specifically, seeing the essence of "her" disappear into delirum over that last week in the hospital scared the shit out of me. I watched it build over a period of days until one day she was actively hallucinating, fixed pinpoint pupils, and only semi-lucid. It was scary because she was like my father when he was dying-- there but not all there. I didn't want to watch my mom slip away like that.
The nurses and doctors seemed relatively unconcerned, and I finally insisted that they call in a neurologist. The neurologist was a smarmy old prick of the worst kind, and he didn't seem all that concerned either, citing my mother's mental health history (which never involved hallucinating or delirium). He and one of the nurses were of the consensus that she needed to get up and walk more to get better, which made me furious since she was completely batshit crazy and her oxygen sats were dropping when she walked even though she was on a high amount of oxygen. I knew she was doing her best, and they wanted to blame her for being sick.
The day she had to be put on ventilation, apparently one of the orderlies turned off her oxyegn tank and forgot about it, so she wasn't getting oxygen until she had an attack. That was the day she was supposed to be released, and no one told me about the oxygen tank mishap until my mother did. Seeing her breathing get to a crisis like that for seemingly no reason shook me. Just the day before the delirium seemed to have been passing.
They moved her to a nursing home the next day once they got her off of the ventilator, which I thought was really premature. Once they moved her, we were no longer hampered by visiting hours and rules about kids. For two weeks we'd been rushing to the hospital the second my husband got home and we'd take shifts-- one with my mom, one in the lobby herding the kid while he got stared for being a toddler. Finally we could go in a bit later, not rush, and take the baby which was good for us and for my mom.
The change in her when she went from the hospital to the nursing home was shockingly sudden and unexpected. I imagine it was because her medication was changed once she was discharged from the hospital. The hallucinations stopped, she was lucid, and for the first time in a month she was my mom again, not a sick shell of herself. I met her physical therapist who commented to me that my mom was working hard instead of bitching that she wasn't doing enough. Hearing that really did my heart some good.
Along with all of this, we've had my mom's very elderly dogs who have managed to track in about 3 tons of dirt and eat through a six-panel door and doorframe. Our house is for sale (still), and as the economy tanks, things get more and more grim. I've had to refuse all showings because we're simply not here and the house is in a shambles. We reduced our price by $10K, but to be honest, I'm ready to reduce it as low as we can go to just get out. The cost of gas and the stress of everything isn't worth it to me. I just want out of this house-- I'm sick of scrounging to pay a mortgage that was somehow affordable for the last 5 years and now has us stretched to the limit. I don't know what happened, really, except that taxes, insurance, and energy went up all at the same time.
All of this has been crashing down on me today. Then I spoke to my mom and they are trying to send her home on Saturday. She's on 5 liters of oxygen still 24/7-- I have no idea how the insurance company thinks she's going to make that workable. She's have to change tanks every 1-2 hours, and those things are dangerous and heavy. Her therapist yesterday said she expects that my mom needs at least 4 more weeks of rehab in the nursing home. Now the insurance is pulling the plug on that, wanting to send her a visiting nurse instead. My mom isn't ready to go home and she's said so.
So to cap all this off, I had a stress meltdown and ate about 17 million calories because I'm also stressed out that I didn't make it to the gym today and the whole process of getting in shape has taken 15 months so far, and this home stretch is just awful.
So just, fuck fuck fuck.