Jeopardy

Today's hospital visit was basically like an episode of Jeopardy; short and full of useless information. 

No info from the doctors, nothing useful from the nurses, nothing reliable from Mom. Very little improvement and she's no closer to coming home. At least she's not doing worse.

Mom's starting to get anxious again. She said that the doctors told her that her episodes had to do with anxiety meds. It sounded like they were suggesting that her not-seizures were withdrawal symptoms. What that makes them, I don't know. I couldn't get a doctor on a Saturday, and the nurse was rather insistent that she understood the situation far better than the doctors, so she assured me that all of this was because of her high ammonia level and that seizures are expected. This, of course, is the antithesis of what I was told by the doctor yesterday, so I wasn't pleased with a nurse who wanted to argue and insist she can diagnose better than the doctors. The CT scan showed nothing, according to the know-it-all nurse. Frankly, I'd rather wait to hear from a real doctor on Monday instead of the nurse who doesn't understand that blood test results don't have much to do with HE. It's not what they rely on anymore because it doesn't seem to correlate. She did say that Mom's blood test from yesterday showed her level down to 99, and they're trying to get it down to 90. 

Mom looked 110% better when I showed up. She said she didn't *feel* better. Her arms and legs keep falling asleep, so she keeps trying to get up and stretch them out, but they don't want her standing or walking because of those not-seizure episodes. She keeps drifting back into the paranoia, asking me what I "expect to come of all of this" or "expect to happen" or if I'm "getting what [I] want." She starts to get snippy and take on an accusatory tone, but calms down when I ask her if she's upset. After begging me this afternoon to come up and see her, that she's so lonely and misses me, that she needs me...she sent me home after less than 2 hours. She kept telling me that she wants me to get some sleep. By the time I left, she was crying and scared and starting to go into one of her panic attacks. She's upset that I've been driving her car to see her. My car is on empty, so I've been using hers. I told her today that I don't want to use up all her gas, and it seemed to piss her off. She's banned me from using her car, and even banned the caregiver from using it. That's probably best, because she's keeping the registration and tags in her purse and refusing to give it over so I can put the tags on the car. I don't want anyone to get pulled over. She has a lot of little complaints and can't remember when they're giving her medication, so she keeps asking for it. She's repeating herself and not making sense, cutting off words and sentences. Basically the same as yesterday.

She called me twenty minutes after I left and told me she didn't realize I hadn't been there very long and that she was sorry. She told me about 20x to drive safely, about 30x to call her when I got home, and at least a dozen times that she "doesn't know what to do with [me]"...whatever that means. It took her half an hour to tell me that over and over again. I called her when I got home. It was a quick conversation. But now she's called me again, and is repeating that she's having a panic attack and needs her pain meds and her anxiety meds. She says that she knows it's just her and that she needs to know who her doctor is, and then repeats those ideas. She's stuck in a thought loop. I hope they figure out what's going on with her. I'd really love it if they actually logged her behavior and mood swings so that people who see her when she's fine don't think I'm making this up. I'm a good writer, but not that good. She's weeping and I can't even understand half of what she's saying right now. It's muffled by tears and she's doing something weird with the phone.

I'm taking tomorrow off. I don't know if I'll be able to see her again before picking her up. I may be able to figure out the gas money to go. But I hope she doesn't send me home before 2 hours when I have to spend 3 driving for it.