Since Mom's return from respite, a lot of things have changed. Mom is in the hospital bed in the dining room and avoiding entering her bedroom and getting furred up by dogs. She was left to monitor and administer her own medication. She was lucid enough, and the social worker (who I am so not pleased with, it's actually ridiculous) and case manager (who has not been managing her case until this point) dediced she could do this on her own. There was resistance from myself and the nurses who have been caring for her and actually know what they're dealing with, but the case manager is the one in charge and Mom was adamant about wanting to take control of her life and her healthcare. She was having problems remembering how much of which medications to take when, so I helped her pick out her medications the last few mornings. Yesterday, a nurse came out and divided her regular meds vs. her "as needed" medications and put her regular medications in the am/pm pill box. The time was also changed from 6 am/pm to 8 am/pm.
Last night, Mom took both Wednesday PM at 8 PM and Thursday PM pills at 11 PM last night. She freaked herself out and the nurse recommended a night in the ER for observation. They monitored her until after 5 AM as specified by poison control and released her. The meds she took were not the ones that mess with her head and cause her to be loopy (i.e. pain/anxiety meds), but regular medications (i.e. for bladder disease or thyroid) and she didn't notice any real difference. Actually, the worst it did was raise her blood pressure to the level that's normal for most people. This isn't good, because liver disease can cause some blood vessels to rupture and we try to keep her BP low, but it wasn't high enough to cause that sort of damage. Basically, it was an uncomfortable hotel stay. She is home now and I checked her morning medication to make sure she is taking what she is supposed to take, though since I'm told to keep her boxes unlocked, there is no way to prevent this from happening when I'm at work. Mom caught the OD herself and made us aware, and she behaved very well even though she was scared out of her mind. She thought she accidentally killed herself. At least I got an "I love you" out of it. We'll be getting a calendar and clock to try to keep her on track and will be watching very closely until we figure she can do this on her own for real.
A schedule has not been worked out as of yet. We had planned on meeting Tuesday night, but my brother was called out for work and now he works nights (yes, nights, for at least the foreseeable future) so we probably won't have a chance to really hammer it out until next week. Also, someone reported our dogs and animal control came out to the house and sufficiently scared the crap out of Mom. She is stating that we have to put our dogs to sleep and give one to her mother, neither of which is going to happen if I can avoid it. Those dogs, as furry as they are, are family. The sick one (we all know which one) does need to be put down, and Mom just recently came to terms with the idea. What's ironic is that this situation was going to be resolved within a month's time, and someone threw a wrench into the works. Now I have a completely different problem to deal with, and whoever came to the house left no paperwork or instructions for me to follow so I don't know what I'm supposed to do within 30 days. We'll see what happens there, but I may need to find homes for two dogs. This is a devastating blow to us and it comes at a time most unfortunate.
There is a family meeting scheduled for today (who scheduled it, we're not sure...poor communication and insinuations are flying around...I'm distrustful of some of the nursing staff). I may or may not attend via telephone, as it is unclear as to why nobody in the family was informed of the family meeting, but the brother will be there and I will update anything important if I can later.
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