I tried to use today as a rest & recovery day. I slept in, took it easy, and tried to rally my immune system after the last few days of testing it. I know Mom's mood swings are swinging like pendulums, so I tried to take advantage of her hate-the-daughter mood before she swung into the needy-mother mood.
It happened faster than I thought. She called and told me she had had a seizure. She doesn't remember it and that scares her. She doesn't remember much, and isn't making a whole lot of new memories, but she can remember that her memory is failing. She's in a lot of pain, she has a massive headache, and her belly is huge.
When I got to the hospital, I was informed that she had had three such incidents, but they don't know what they are. The description the PCA gave the doctor (complete with demonstration) made the doctor think that they could have been seizures. But only the PCA saw all three. The nurse and doctor did not. This is because they were very short-lived incidents and the PCA is what's referred to as a "sitter". They literally sit in the room unless they have to go get something for the patient, and then they come back into the room. The nurse monitors several rooms and the doctors only make rounds twice a day unless something explodes. The incidents as they were described lasted mere seconds, which was not enough time for the PCA to get the nurse into the room. Mom woke up immediately after each incident. They said that her arms were stiff and pointing slightly in front of her and her head was shaking and swiveling like she was dizzy, but she was unresponsive during the episode. She's been complaining about being dizzy all day and is a serious fall risk.
They gave her a CT scan of her head. We're waiting for a neuro consult, who will likely order an EEG. Without these test results, we don't know what's really going on. The medical team doc says that whatever this is, it isn't HE. They didn't run the CT scan til about 9 pm, so I'm assuming I won't hear anything until tomorrow or maybe even Monday on those results. The East Campus (the hospital she's in) is considered sub-acute. This means that she's too sick to come home, but not sick enough to be in the main hospital. It also means that they don't necessarily hurry and tests, results, consults, and the like are considered important but not very urgent.
When I first got to the hospital, she was....indescribable. She had zero idea where she was, what she was doing, or what she was being told. She was physically fighting with the PCA, who was trying to help her. It was sad. I could see the PCA was trying, but she doesn't have a clear understanding of how to treat people with mental defects. She kept yelling at Mom (Mom was pulling on her cords, trying to rip off the O2 monitor and even biting at the connection). I told her that it's not a hearing problem; it's a comprehension problem. Yelling won't get her to do it. In fact, it just triggers stress and that makes her brain function drop even lower. Luckily, she wasn't there long, because it was shift change. She let Mom lay in dirty sheets, and I don't like that. The night PCA was wonderful - even reminded me of the caregiver. She changed Mom's sheets, made Mom comfortable, even moved the picture collage I put up so that Mom could see it (they had blocked the area I had taped it to with pads around her bed railing so that she can't fall out). She was very sweet.
At one point, she told me that she was impressed with how I speak to Mom. That I'm very patient with her and how she's seen people be mean when their sick relative repeats themselves and babbles for hours. Mom did, actually, babbled the whole time and not make much sense. They gave her something to calm her down, and it worked well. She stopped trying to bite things and fight everything, and stopped saying she was "leaving the prom". She did, however, continue to babble, stutter, beg for pain meds, beg God for help, beg me for help, repeat herself about 800x, and start a million sentences she never finished. The PCA is also a caregiver and said she's seen people treated horribly by their caregiver-relatives. I told her that this part was easy; Mom's being nice. It's much harder to be calm and patient when she's accusing me of being the devil and raising such hell about me being in the room and demanding to see a social worker that they fear I may be abusing her at home and maybe she's telling the truth about me trying to kill her and hiding her meds. I said that my mom can be a tool, but she doesn't mean to be one. I told the PCA that if she was in the room the night before, she'd never believe this was the same woman. She said she's seen this before and that she believes it, and she knows it's the primary caregiver that gets the hateful anger when it needs a target. But tonight, Mom was having me read passages from the Bible to calm her down, and she was repeating prayers that I was reading her, asking God for help and strength and (kinda funny) for the doctors to have the wisdom to know what they're doing. She is mistaking the pain in her gut for hunger and won't stop eating. I brought her a JIU, graham crackers, spaghetti and chicken soup. The PCA even commented that she could tell that the caregiver was Jamaican by the look of the chicken soup, and that she bets it's delicious. And she'd be right about that. HA!
At one point, Mom made the PCA tear up. It was sweet. Mom was telling me that she wanted me to go home and get some sleep, but that she wanted me to stay. She said that she doesn't remember being mean to me or accusing me of any of the things she did the night before. She apologized and said she doesn't want to hurt me anymore and that she doesn't mean to and she loves me (insert a little crying...she always feels guilty afterward). I told her I know she doesn't mean to, and that's why I'm not mad at her. I told her that when she's that sick (i.e. she doesn't know which end is up), she doesn't know what she's saying and I know she doesn't really think that way about me. She got a hug and a forehead kiss, and then I put her eyemask on her and asked the nurse to bring her something to help her sleep. It was after 10 at this point, the rest of the room was passed out, and Mom kept saying how she needed to shut up, but couldn't. Her mind just wouldn't stop. I imagine that she has a rather humungous migraine. The nurse brought her something to help her sleep, and I stayed until she passed out, which I'm happy to say happened quicker than I thought it would. Mouth open, graham crackers and her water bottle by her side.
I'm scared. I don't know what's going on in her noggin, and the severity of her migraine and confusion worry me. I've never seen her this bad. She was like those super-old people that were in the hospice hospital with biogran. The old man who would mumble at passersby and tell women they were good little girls in school and ask if they knew his daughter Maddy. Maddy was a good little girl. I asked the doc what could cause Mom to behave this way - why is my Mom gnawing on her own fingers and medical equipment? She said she doesn't know, and that the testing should help them figure out what's going on. She did confer with Mom's hepatologist, and somehow they decided that this was her "normal" behavior. But trust me when I say that Mom hasn't been this out of it since she was on hospice in 2010, had a bad mix of meds, was up for 36 hours straight, and took a 3 am stroll down the block with her pajamas on backwards. And we're fairly certain she drank Lysol at that time. She also walked so much that the ascites fluid went to her legs and they were so swollen that her skin cracked and bled. I'm glad she's resting and calmer with me there. I hope tomorrow brings good news - at least that we know what's going on and can move forward from there. For now, it's nearly 2 am and I'm in need of my own downtime. Goodnight...or good morning. Whatever, as long as it's good.
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