take good care of my Mom

Mom fell twice in January but her injuries have all healed up and she is doing quite well. Even her eating has improved – she’s up to 95 pounds and I’m very happy to see that. I admit to being skeptical that would turn around for her.

A few weeks ago I saw that she was pretty well and healthy and I decided to take advantage of a window of opportunity when she was healthy and strong enough and I took her to Cabela’s. As a young woman she loved to hunt and fish so Cabela’s was a blast for her. She loved seeing all the animals and we had a nice lunch in the restaurant upstairs.

We are going out to a buffet for lunch with Mom and my sister tomorrow and Mom asked to go back to Cabela’s when we’re through. We were all really looking forward to it. But I just checked the web site and see that they are closed on Easter. Shoot! Well, we will have to get back together and do it another time real soon.

Mom had another accident (fall) 3 weeks ago. Fortunately she did not break anything but she cut her leg significantly. The cut was about 6-7 inches long and it split about an inch. Since then she has required daily dressing changes while she heals. I live an hour and a half away and see her only once a week. Her next door neighbors have been kind enough to help out with things like this in the past and said they would do it again this time.

But as time goes by I know it gets harder and harder for them to get over there every day. They’ve missed several days this week. At the last nurse visit (1 week ago) I got specific instructions for her leg’s care and wrote out all the instructions for whomever would change her dressing.

Mom kept forgetting to show them the paper, then finally decided not to because she thinks the neighbor does a great job and doesn’t need additional instructions. Mom is 83 and it’s really hard to watch out for her when I am this far away.

Ideally she should be in assisted living but that will be a tough sell. I need to get busy doing research so I can move in that direction though. In the meantime I may need to see who I can hire to do things like change a bandage when she needs it.

I took Mom to the doctor yesterday. The x-rays came back saying her hip is not broken. Unfortunately her pain has gotten worse the last few days. She’s barely limping around with her walker. They said if nothing is broken she should start feeling better in a few days. If not, I will take her back to the doctor next week.

Over the last 2 or 3 weeks Mom has had increased energy. It’s good to see her moving around pretty well. She still uses a walker at home and a cane and my hand on the other side for assistance when she goes out to appointments.

The boy next door to her brings her mail every day. But I know she gets impatient and now that she’s feeling a little better she wants to go out there to the road with her cane and and bring in her mail herself. If there were a way for her to take her walker outside that might be okay, but thanks to steps on both sides of her house she wouldn’t be able to get the walker outside without assistance. So she’s supposed to wait for the neighbor kid to pick up the mail.

I guess the day before yesterday she ran out of patience and went out to get the mail herself. She did okay, but decided to keep it a secret from me that she did that. Until yesterday. Yesterday she got her own mail again and on returning to her house she fell on the steps.

At first she thought she broke her hip because it was very painful. Apparently the hip is not broken, just bruised pretty bad. She managed to skin up her knee and elbow pretty good too. Today she is mighty sore and promising me that she will “never do that again.” I hope she doesn’t.

The whole incident scared her pretty good. Not to mention me. The last time she fell and said “I thought I broke a rib but I didn’t” it turned out she really DID break some things (2 ribs, her pubic bone and a vertebra in her back) and she had a long recovery period.

I will be in her town on Monday and am taking her to the doctor just to make sure everything is okay.

The last couple of weeks Mom’s weight has been measured around 86 to 86.6 pounds. Every weight is on a different scale so it’s hard to tell if we’re making any progress yet. She doesn’t eat enough, I can tell you that. At least I have gotten her to drink a bottle of Ensure every day.

Tomorrow we have a meeting with Meals on Wheels to get her signed up for that. I hope she will eat the meals and not complain about “too much starch.” She’s been diabetic for 35 years so old habits are hard to break even though her doctor has lifted all dietary restrictions so she can gain some weight.

The Kyphoplasty for my mom went very well. In fact it’s pretty much a miracle. Her constant Level 10 pain is gone. If she sits too long she gets some soreness but that’s manageable.

The first thing I did (after the happy dance) was take away the pain meds. She had been on them so long and they made her so nauseous she couldn’t eat. In the pre-op they weighed her and she was down to 93 pounds. I was very alarmed. This is a woman who weighed 125 pounds earlier this year.

After the procedure I was hoping for her to start eating again but she was out of the habit. Then two days after surgery she got some awful intestinal thing and had severe diarrhea for 3 days. What do they tell you to do for diarrhea? Stop eating solid foods. And no dairy for 7 days (including nutritional supplements like Ensure).

She has gotten over the crud but her weight is down to 85 pounds. She still eats like a bird. I have a lot of things on my list to try to help her be encouraged to eat. She goes back to the doctor tomorrow. I hope something works soon. She is so thin now she is constantly tired and spends much of the day in bed. I’m very worried about her.

Last week my mom had an MRI and they discovered she has a compression fracture in her back as well as a number of other things that are causing her pain.

She was referred to a specialist and it looks like they will do a Kyphoplasty. When you have a compression fracture the discs compress together pinching the nerves in between. That’s what causes the pain.

In a Kyphoplasty they make two half inch incisions on either side of her spine here the fracture is. They inject little balloons into each spot and blow them up. That recreates the space needed between the discs.

The balloons come out, and they inject cement into the space. It hardens pretty quickly and that relieves a lot of the pain for most people.

The only specialist in Mom’s town who does this procedure was out this week. We go on Tuesday for a consultation and hopefully they can do it on Thursday.

This goal is #1 at the moment and has been eclipsing all the others. Mom is currently in a state of unrelieved pain that just isn’t acceptable to us. Unfortunately the pain medicine makes her extremely nauseous too, so they have to give anti-nausea medicine. Hopefully they can figure out some way to give her some relief soon.

Didn’t do a good enough job this week. I noticed her lower eyelid was a little swollen earlier in the week. I thought she would call me if it got worse, but she didn’t. On Friday I got a call from the visiting nurse saying it looked infected to her and now the spot had a yellow tip.

Fortunately her eye doctor could see her Saturday morning. When I picked her up it looked really awful. The doctor opened a spot for drainage and removed a ton of infected material. She’s on antibiotics (pills and drops) and will go back for a recheck tomorrow. I should have called the doctor the first time I saw it swollen.

Mom went home on Friday. Before her arrival we put up a new grab bar in the bathroom, a new shower head for a bath aid to help her with bathing, moved the newspaper box closer to the door so she doesn’t have to deal with steps, and got the handrail put in out front.

I’m not thrilled with the handrail – I wish it were a bigger one. But it will do for now.

I keep second guessing letting her stay in her home alone. She really really was against the idea of going anywhere but home. In the hospital and rehab place she kept saying her life must be over and she couldn’t wait to get home. (sigh)

We’re putting a bunch of safeguards in place – 2 phone calls a day, neighbors checking in, PT, OT, bath aid, nurse, etc. Hopefully she will start getting well and when it’s no longer a crisis I may have better starting a discussion of assisted living.