January 3, 2017
(finished Jan 4…?)
Coming out of a well interrupted night of sleep, Mom’s days since Saturday, look something like this… I think. I could be wrong about the times because… well… nobody is getting much sleep around here.
Megan gets coffee. The shuttle doesn’t start until 6:40 so I walk 5 blocks to the hospital. Where I get more coffee.
5:15AM – visit from the residents and surgeons in charge of Mom’s trajectory. responsiveness check (Colleen, what’s your name? What’s your birthday? What day is it, Colleen? What year is it? Close! What year is it? Close! Subtract three… Where are you?) Sometimes, if we’re feeling ambitious, we also check to see if she knows what city she’s in, etc. They move the drain level up or down, challenging it a little more every day, then put in orders for CT scans or whatever else might be needed to see how we’re doing.
I’m out of coffee.
6 AM – Meds; responsiveness check again (Colleen, what’s your name? What’s your birthday? What day is it, Colleen? What year is it? Close! What year is it? Great! Where are you?) Then we boost mom up in the bed and turn her to a new side. Oh, unless she thinks she needs to go the bathroom. She still has a foley in to pee. But if she has warning, we are attempting to use the potty. All this activity has likely spiked her subarachnoid headache which I hear is something like the worst migraine ever… so we get mom comfortable, adjust blankets, lighting, etc
7 AM – Shift change is underway. Night nurse & Day nurse come in and go over everything together and do a responsiveness check again (Colleen, what’s your name? What’s your birthday? What day is it, Colleen? What year is it? Close! What year is it? Is that the right century? What year is it? … Great! Ok, and where are you?) Mom slogs through like she answering from the depths of the ocean and then she goes back to sleep.
Baby is hungry. Baby needs diaper. I’m still out of coffee. Must find some coffee…
8:15 AM – the intensive team rounds make it down to us. They go through the full patient history and nit pick at all the details. There are med students with them and it’s a full 10 minutes of convo then… ANOTHER RESPONSIVENESS CHECK! (Colleen, what’s your name? What’s your birthday? What day is it, Colleen? What year is it? Close! What year is it? Where are you?) Sometimes, if we’re feeling ambitious we also check to see if she knows what city she’s in, etc.
They tweak some meds, we adjust mom… and now we’re already at:
9AM – breakfast was dropped off at least half an hour ago. But mom needs more meds now and usually is pretty uncomfortable and willing to try something new. So we detach some tubes (no, let’s get this one too… Okay, let’s wrap this around the back of your neck and it can rest there… ) And then the nurse hooks the bag of urine to a loop on her scrubs, we move the drain line closer so that it doesn’t pull and mom slowly boosts herself up with the help of a solid bear hug… We just stand for a minute because mom’s too shaky/dizzy to keep her eyes open and needs a second to put herself back together. Then the slow shuffle starts. Amazing… it’s like 9:30 already… shuffle… shuffle… it’s a crazy dance… take a step… move a line… take a step… (let’s take another step Ms. Colleen, one more step, okay, do you feel the back of the chair now? one more little step? okay, we’re going to sit down, reach back, reach back and try to stick your hips out so you’re sitting back in the chair… reach back, reach back… okay! Good try!) Now mom is collapsed into the chair and we’ve got to shift her weight so that she’s supported and sitting up… (Can we shift your hips further back? Can we get you to sit back further in the chair? Ms. Colleen can you help us for one more minute? Can you lift your head?) We brace mom’s back with pillows. But she’s exhausted from the effort and now she’s in a chair and just a few minutes in she’s already gettin’ a little waspy.
Mom can you open your eyes? We need to try to eat some breakfast.
Seriously? Feeding my super picky toddler is easier. Mom drinks the think apple juice herself, but she’s too exhausted to lift a few bites of pancake with a fork. She’s ripped out the feeding tube so many times… she really needs to eat by herself. But she’s SOOOOOO tired… if she falls asleep mid bite she could choke so even if she DID have the energy to feed herself someone still has to stay with her. And no liquids yet. She’s so tired she would probably just aspirate.
(Are we really not through with breakfast yet? This thing is already like, 3 pages long? Oh, 4 pages? You don’t say…)
(And it’s not even lunch time yet?!? Crap. We’re still eating breakfast!)
Mom barely gets through half her breakfast. Then she’s too full. Remember, she had not had solid foods (save for an illegal snickers) for over two weeks when we started her back on meals this last weekend… so she’s sort of eating like an anorexic teenage girl. No offense to anorexic teenage girls.
Which brings me to the next crazy thing. Mom only weighs 152 now. As of Tuesday, about noon, mom only weighs 152. She weighed almost 190 on Dec 16th when this mess hit the fan. Don’t get all excited and think this is a good weight loss program. A lot of that is muscle strength lost too.
Well… breakfast all tied up now… it’s about 11AM and Mom is practicing some uber-snark. She’s sore and tired, stiff and uncomfortable. We’ve tried reading but it hasn’t caught on much yet because she doesn’t remember what we read yesterday and she’s too uncomfortable to focus. She thinks she needs to poop. The baby’s hungry.
So it takes between 11:30 and 12:30 to get mom up, get her to the bedside commode, try to use it, then get her back into bed, situated, hooked up, next round of drugs administered and do another responsiveness check (Colleen, what’s your name? What’s your birthday? What day is it, Colleen? What year is it? Close! What year is it? Awesome! Where are you? … Where are you? Are you in a hospital? Colleen, can you answer me? Do you know what city you’re in?) Nope. She’s out.
With any luck, so is the baby. Because I’m out of coffee again.
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