Doctor Days

 

It's been a little while since I posted last.  Things have been BUSY.  Mom was not doing well, refusing to eat or cooperate with nurses.  Hospice came to do an assessment, but as soon as Mom realized she wouldn't get physical therapy, she balked at hospice and decided she didn't want to do that yet.  I told her that if she was going to do physical therapy, she would have to EAT.  If you have no fuel or energy, you can't do PT.  She's been better, especially since there's a lovely young man named Joe in the kitchen who does "special" dishes for her now.

When things were looking dire, I called the brothers and told them that if they wanted to see Mom, they should probably come and do it.  And they did!  The two in Atlanta came.  The local brother who is always working came.  And my brother in New York and his husband came for several days.  Matt and I kept up our visits too - so Mom had LOTS of stimulation.  She was more with it, eating better and actual conversations were possible.  Yes, there was still weird sprinkled in, but overall, a much higher level of coherence.  And it's sticking around a bit!  

On a more sober note, Mom's toe wound has gotten worse.  We went to Wound Care last week and when they unwrapped it, everyone in the room gasped.  Swollen, angry and you could see the bone.  She'd been on antibiotics for a week to battle the MERSA infection in her toe, but it looked worse than before.  They cleaned it, debrided it (removed necrotic tissue) and talked about next steps.  Mom is allergic to a lot of antibiotics, and the ones that remained to her had bad interactions with her medications - which leaves us with the ONE that she was already taking.  They doubled the dose, scheduled x-rays and ultrasounds and another appointment to go over everything.  I asked if amputation was an option under consideration and the doctor said not yet.  The problem with amputation is that it  still leaves Mom open to infection and we still only have the one antibiotic in our arsenal - and that doesn't seem to be doing much of anything.  We'll see what they have to say at the end of the week.

This week, we're doing the rounds of testing.  Monday was x-rays, Tuesday was ultrasound.  Our Thursday appointment at Wound Care was bumped back to Friday, so I get a little respite from doctor offices.  We use a local transit company since getting Mom in and out of the car is so wearing on her (and me).  They can pick her up in her wheelchair and we don't have to hassle with multiple transfers to and from vehicles.  The downside of it is that we spend a lot of time waiting.  They schedule pickup an hour to hour and a half before the appointment and then it's 3 hours before they'll come back to pick her up.  So we wait.  Yesterday, they scheduled her pickup before lunch, so she was going to miss a meal at the home.  I told her we'd have a picnic in the waiting room instead.   

I made egg salad, sliced cucumbers, cut up strawberries.  I also had some cheese and a flourless chocolate torte and applesauce.  She refused the torte ("I don't eat chocolate").  I didn't offer her the cheese as she'd said she couldn't eat it and she was too full for applesauce because she ate ALL the egg salad and a lot of the cukes and strawberries.  It was a good day, foodwise, for her.  When I wheeled her to the nurse before dinner back at the home to get her blood sugar checked, it was 98 pre-dinner, so that was good.  She's been having issues with very low blood sugar - so much so that they've wanted to send her to the hospital on a couple of occasions.  Not last night!

I'm rather anxious about Friday's appointment.  I don't know what they'll say, what they'll propose to do about her toe.  I have a feeling we're going to have to revisit the hospice idea, but I'm not saying anything about it to her until we know more.