Lots of Nothing, then BAM!

LOTS OF NOTHING

I haven't written in a while because not a whole lot was happening.  Mom's still in the memory care home, eating, sleeping, and watching TV.  

There's always the kind of wacky weirdness that she comes up with and there's something different every day.  Most of it not worth mentioning, though I must say the refusal to flush the toilet because "the laundry man needs to check what I've done and decide how much lidocaine I can have," provided enough weirdness to last a while.  Um... first of all, WHY is it the laundry man's job?  Second, lidocaine is only used topically on your foot when they have to scrape your toe.  Third... WHAT??  

My mom has never been a terribly neat or clean freak, but the toilet thing takes it to a whole new level of yuck.  She does, however, fret about how dirty and dusty her window blinds are.  The home does clean her room so it's passably clean, but they don't dust the blinds or clean the windows.

It was really bothering her, so I offered to come in and clean her room for her.  First thing I did was dust the blinds and clean the windows.  I have to admit, even I was impressed with the amount of dust that curled up and landed on the floor.  I didn't clean the outside of the windows, but even the bit I did brightened up her room a lot!  Then I cleared her dresser, dusted and polished and put stuff back, surreptitiously putting all the trash in a bag to take home with me.  Her dresser was a lot less cluttered when I was done.  Night stand wiped down, CPAP cleaned and then I turned my attention to the bathroom.  I could NOT get the toilet clean.  It's cleaner, but not clean.  I told her that and she asked me why I couldn't clean the toilet and I explained that if she wouldn't flush the toilet, all kinds of yuck got stuck.  I was using a pretty heavy duty toilet cleaning product and it still wasn't clean - so I told her I'd come back with pumice and more cleaning stuff another day and asked her to PLEASE flush the toilet.  And she agreed.  I don't know how long that will last, but a tiny victory nonetheless.

HOLIDAYS

The approach of Thanksgiving made us face what to do about holidays.  As much as Mom has forgotten, she seems to remember where she put a lot of things in the house.  Sometimes she asks me to bring something (an art history book was the latest) and tells me where to find it.  I think she's testing to see if we've done away with stuff at the house.  She's very attached to her stuff.  The truth is that a lot of purging has been happening.  The Box Room is practically empty now, with things going to live with other people or being donated.  Because of that, and the resulting trauma to her should she realize that a lot of the things she's been hoarding are gone, we really don't want to bring her home for holidays.  Or at any time, really.  It would be hard on her both mentally and physically, so what to do about holidays????

Thankfully, her memory care home provided us with the solution.  They put on a lovely Thanksgiving luncheon.  Each resident could have three guests, so my dad, my son, and I turned up a week before the actual holiday and had lunch with Mom.  She ate everything and had the best time visiting with us.  It really was lovely. 

One of the things we've noticed is that her sense of time is almost non-existent.  She rarely knows what day it is, or even what time of day it is.  So the fact that Thanksgiving came and went without fanfare didn't really sink in to her.

I visited her, and took her deviled eggs, which she remembered well enough to exclaim "Oh, Goodie!" when I presented them to her.  My mama LOVES my deviled eggs.  We had a lovely visit, and when it came time for her to go to lunch, I took her out, parked her at her table, then ran home to take a shower, grab the rest of the deviled eggs and head for Dad's house.

It was a strange experience, this first holiday without Mom there...  Dad bought our dinner from Publix and all he had to do was reheat it.  Jerry came, Matt made brisket ends (they weren't quite burnt).  Instead of using every dish in the house, I brought Chinette and we served ourselves from the stove and carried the plates out to the dining room.  No good silver or serving plates or fancy china - just good food and good company.  Just the four of us.  As crazy as life has been, it was what we could manage.  One day we might "do it up right" again with all the fanfare, but this year, this holiday, it was what we could manage and it was just right.

BAM!

I was chatting with my son as he drove back from his Dad's Thanksgiving night, when another call came in - from the Home.  I said goodnight to my kid and picked up.  Mom fell.  Slid off the side of her bed, it looked like to the fall-detection camera.  No one was sure what she was doing - getting up to pee or trying to pull up another blanket, but the end result was a trip to the floor.  They got her up, took her vitals and she insisted she was fine, so she was put back to bed.

In the morning, they called again.  She was complaining of a headache, nausea, unusual confusion and pain in her back and shoulder.  Because she's had previous head injuries and her family is prone to stroke, I told them to send her to the hospital.  Better to get her checked out.

 I got there a little before 9am.  It was weirdly quiet.  I suspected the deer-hunting accidents and car accidents hadn't started up yet that early.  I made my way to her little room where she was shivering under a couple of blankets.  Mom is always cold.  I dug her hat out of the patient bag and put it on her and found a couple more blankets and added those to her little pile and put the neck pillow around her neck.  She finally stopped shivering and looked at me with her watery blue eyes and said she hurt.  Her back, her arm (she claims she's got a crippled arm these days), her shoulder, her legs and her foot.  So, pretty much everything.

The nurse came in and checked her vitals.  Everything actually looked pretty good - BP good, heart-rate good, blood oxygen good.  Temperature was slightly elevated, so he did a COVID/flu/RSV test to make sure those bases were covered.  All negative.  She was taken for a CT and another tech came into the room with an x-ray machine later.  Nurse Mike returned and took a lot of blood.  Tylenol was given and we were left alone for a while.  She dozed a bit.  Nurse Mike came back and took more blood to check cardiac markers.  The doctor came in and looked her over, felt her abdomen and her arm and I pulled off her sock and showed him her foot.  It was swollen and red (cellulitis) and the index toe next to the amputated one was swollen and angry looking.  

I had noted a hole in the end of her toe the previous week and had set up an appointment with Wound Care but the earliest they could get us in was next week.  I'd come back a couple of days later to check it and it looked bad, like the whole end of it was coming off.  I bandaged it the way we'd bandaged the big toe previously and was planning to change the bandage again on Friday (this day).  The toe itself actually looked better than it had, but it was obvious that an infection had started in there at some point and spread.

She was given dilaudid for the pain and was able to sleep.  An orderly came to take her away, which surprised me - no one had said anything to me about what was going on with her.  Just before the orderly showed up, the ER got REALLY busy, so there was no one to talk to me.  We went up to her room and got her settled in there, and I finally got to talk to the nurse and find out what was up.

As it turns out, that infection, in addition to the fall, is why they admitted her.  Her white blood cell counts were through the roof, which indicated a severe infection.  I answered questions for the nurse while Mom slept on.  I tried to rouse her enough to ask what she wanted for dinner, but she said she didn't want to eat and went back to sleep.  I said okay and ordered her some soft food in case she changed her mind.

And then I left.  I went by the Home to talk to the nurse and tell her that Mom wouldn't be back that night.  Got her CPAP to take to her as well as her toothbrush.  I looked around her room and wondered briefly if she'd ever be back in it.  As fast and as severely as this came up, I really didn't know.  There were no further phone calls, so I know she's still with us this morning.  Gathering paperwork for the hospital and will go over this afternoon.

More to come.