|
| |
|
My om left yesterday morning for her own home in Alabama where there's lots of problems with excessive rains and flooding. She'll have her hands full there, and I remain here to keep an eye on things and encourage my grandma to get better. At some point - hopefully soon - I'll be able to move my grandma back home and care for her, but meanwhile I need to vissit her regularly, keep her motivated, and keep her nurses and therapists motivated. As much as I want to just take a break and rest, I know how important it is to encourage my grandma and her therapists, so I'll be spending a lot of time at the skilled care facility and just travelling back nand forth. I do need to get a more smooth routine, though. The back and forth I was doing while my mom was here leaves little time to even sit for a minute until the very end of the day, and I was exhausted physically as well as mentally. The first move, I think, is to switch to two visits a day rather than three (or sometimes four). Even if those two visits are longer, it will cut out some of the back-and-forth, and it will allow me to pace my days a bit better. Today the snow will force me to cut back my number of visits regardless. It's not a huge snowfall, but it's unrelenting, and until it stops around two or three, it's accumulating solidly. It's better to wait until it's done, clear it, then go out to see my grandma. And I have to admit, waking up and getting cleaned up in a relaxed fashion around watching a little TV and surfing the net is nice, relaxing even. I'll be all clean, fed, and ready to go, and even all surfed around the web, well before ten AM, and I'll have done it liesurely and without the rush and stress. It's great. Hopefully I can find ways like this to be a bit more relaxed and balance my time with my grandma with some mental recuperation time for myself. That would be a good thing for both of us by the time my grandma comes home. Posted at 9:34 AM
I scraped the edge of one of the rims on my car yesterday, and it's bothering me. The car parked in the next spot was right along the line, so I swung to the farther edge of the space, but I brushed the curb onthat side and it was enough to scrape the tire and rim. It's not huge - maybe no more than an eight inch in from the edge for one and a half inches - but it means my tires and my car aren't perfect any more. Nobody but me will ever notice, but I'll know - and of course it's the front driver's-side tire, so I'll see it every time I get in the car. It's not a big deal in the big scheme of things, particularly considering everything that's been going on with my grandma, but it still bothers me. What can I say? Posted at 1:49 PM
Houston, we have a bowel movement. Now aren't you glad you checked out this website? My grandma hadn't pooped for five days, just longer than the amount of time she's been receiving a near-continuous feed from the feeding tube, and my mother and I have been increasingly concerned. Nobody else has had our level of worry, but the charge nurse took heed and aded priune juice to the feeding tube, and that made an almost immediate impat. My grandma is in fact sleeping the most soundly we've seen her sleep in three days, and I feel fairly confident that it's largely due to being more comfortable and less weighed down. Now for future reference, I have no plans to discuss poop in the future on this website - just to put you at ease - but this was, we felt, the last major concern with my grandma health-wise, and we are now past the point of worry. From this point it's just a matter of rest and physical therapy. My grandma should regain her strength day by day, and I have every reason to believe she will be back home soon and doing her best to drive me crazy. Posted at 11:49 AM
I can't deny that this is a break from my usual routine taking care of my grandma, but when I was wishing for a break from taking care of her I was thinking more along the lines of a period of freedom and relaxation while somebody else watched over my grandma and I didn't have to worry. Right now just about all I do is worry, and the back and forth to be with her and check up on her condition is exhausting. I still need a break, but just so there's no confusion: I want a break to relax while someone I trust is caring for my grandma andshe is healthy and in good hands. Posted at 1:44 PM
My grandma was discharged from the hospital and sent to Providence Care, a skilled nursing facility where she can get physical and occupational therapy to strengthen her before returning her home. The discharge was somewhat abrupt and certainly without warning, but all seems well with the arrangements at the rehab facility, so I suppose that's all that matters. My grandma herself is tired and not terribly responsive this morning, and I hope to see her more 'with it' later today or certainly in the coming days. I'm concerned about her still, but I'm confident she's past the anything dangerous. Posted at 2:35 PM
My grandma seems much better today - tired but not exhausted and able to communicate back and forth fairly clearly. She's done well with physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy, but tires quickly. Her vitals are good and she's been fully taken off oxygen, and her feeding has proceeded without any trouble through the feeding tube. She's still tired and tires veery quickly with each activity, but she's recovering quickly. The big mystery remains when she moves ahead from here, but I'm personally more than happy for her to have as much time as possible to regain her strength before a transfer to a skilled nursing/rehab facility. I want her to be fully ready to bear the new regimen and not tire out immediately. My biggest worry is that she'll be sent to a skiled facility and then booted out right away with claims that they've gone as far as they can and she's not improving. Once again we're back to the waiting game. Posted at 12:51 PM
... and we're back to major crazy. My grandma was very full of anxiety and very full of dementia last night - to the point that I was holding her down at certain times. She was given a shot that should have calmed her down, and perhaps it did to the extent that she wasn't struggling as much, but it only seems like once we got to this morning that she is finally relaxing enough to sleep. It's possible this is exhaustion and the normal dementia, but it was a rare extremem for my grandma. It's also possible that this was a sort of reaction from her body to the surgery - albeit minor - that inserted her feeding tube. Either way, her overall state last night was very upsetting. This morning she calmed down and slept, and hopefully she will sleep through much of today and tonight. I'm still worried that what we saw last night wasn't just an abberation, but it's easy to worry when so much os totally up in the air. It's difficult to deal with any of this when you have no idea where any of this will lead. So hopefully sleep and at least resting wakefulness will dominate today. My grandma needs rest more than anything now, and I hope she can start getting that. Posted at 12;: 34 PM
|
theDREAMER
name: paul cales
since
october 1, 2001