A Constant Battle (Update on Mother)

Mother’s therapy session was good on Monday. She was encouraged because she experienced virtually no pain. She still has the shakes real bad on her left side and I think it’s mostly due to stress, fear, and weakness (from not eating and drinking enough).

She stubbornly refused to do anything on Tuesday. She was not herself then – kind of loopy and extremely sleepy. It made me wonder if the nurse gave her either a pain or sleeping pill because all she wanted to do was just sleep.

She did some therapy on both Wednesday and Thursday in spite of feeling poorly. She didn’t walk on Wednesday. They had her doing leg and arm exercises in the “gym”.

She tried to walk using the parallel bars on Thursday and succeeded in taking maybe seven tiny steps. Her right foot is hurting her something awful and that leg just wouldn’t cooperate much. I fear that her body is giving out. However, I’m proud of her for working through the initial pain. It took her three attempts (stood up three times) before she finally felt she could try walking. It showed me how determined she was in getting better and wanting out of the Rehab and back home.

On Friday, she refused to do anything again as she was feeling sick. I was discouraged. One of her physical therapists suggested that maybe Mother would do better at home with in home care and having therapists show up there because it just seemed like Mother wasn’t improving. By this time, Mom had gone without eating much of anything for more than two days. It was beginning to worry me because I knew she was getting weak.

My brother’s wife is a nurse and suggested that Mom get tested for UTI because all the symptoms she was having all week long could result from that. So, my brother had the nurses get a urine sample and send it in to get tested. Sure enough, it turned out that she does have UTI again and it’s a bad case this time around. They are getting some kind of testing; but, it takes 48 hours to get the results back. In the meantime, we must get her to drink more fluids. She hates to drink water and it’s been an uphill battle since way back when (the beginning of it all) to get her to even drink anything much less eat.

In the meantime, she started to feel better Friday night and ate a little dinner. She was more like herself even though she was a little loopy. She ate cereal Saturday morning and ate a little lunch and dinner. She also ate some cereal Sunday morning and some lunch. So, it’s been encouraging to see her revive.

My understanding is that my brother wanted Mother to get antibiotics right away and told the nurse(s) on Saturday (the day we found out she has UTI) to get the prescription filled and started right away. Come late Sunday morning, it turned out that the nurse didn’t even get that done. Her excuse was that she didn’t get a call back or something or other and decided to wait. My brother was understandably upset with this. He immediately called Mother’s doctor. Mom’s doctor called back right away and he took the phone to nurse. The antibiotics were finally started about thirty minutes later.

I am not going to lie – I dislike this particular nurse. She’s going to end up killing someone via carelessness someday IF she hasn’t done so already. I don’t know what these poor souls do without having someone there to fight for their loved ones. I am glad that Mother has me around to make sure she gets what she needs to get done. Otherwise, she’d be neglected. Mother is blessed to have my brother fighting for her in all these medical and legal battles because I certainly don’t have to fortitude to do those kinds of things.

I just don’t understand this place at all – there is laziness for one and apathy for another. It has been a constant battle to get some policies changed simply due to neglectful ways. I wonder how long it was this way until I/we showed up here at the rehab? Don’t misunderstand me; there are some wonderful workers / nurses here and both Mom and I like a few of them. However, there are others that just shouldn’t be working in a place like this – they don’t have the desire to help people like Mother let alone the very elderly and the terminal ill.

Anyway, when Mom had the surgery, we had hope. I even looked at the calendar and set the first weekend of April as a goal for me to return home. It’s been discouraging and I hope the surgery wasn’t done too late. In other words, I hope Mother hasn’t gotten too weak and as a result, will never recover completely.

We still have hope. It’s just going to be a constant battle. Even though the first weekend of April is only two weeks away, I still have hope I can return home. Anything can happen in two weeks. Even if I don’t return home the first weekend, I can shoot for the second weekend of April. We just have to take it one day at a time... one week at a time… I can’t stay here and with her forever… I want to go home… I miss my Dan… and my kittehs…