Gangsta Mittens
Words combined to express thoughts. Pictures displayed to convey emotion. Opening my brain to the world.

So they released my mom this afternoon… I should be happy… and to a certain degree I am, but i am also very concerned.  She’s headed home, to the house where she lives with my brother.  The house has two stories and a basement.  The main floor has the kitchen and living/dining rooms, and the upstairs has the bedrooms and bathroom. 

My mom is not able to go up and down stairs.  Her doctor has told her that she should not go up and down the stairs.  So she will have to decide: upstairs with the bathroom or downstairs with the kitchen.  That isn’t going to work.  Essentially she needs to stay upstairs for her own safety.  But she’s going to want to cook, and that will lead her to try to steps.  She’s hard-headed.  When I pointed out the potential problems she said “I think i’ll be ok”….  this is the same woman who falls but doesn’t tell anyone out of embarrassment.  It’s a dangerous situation. 

I think I’m most upset because I’ve been telling her for years, like at least 6 years, that they needed to move to a different house or an apartment.  At that time my dad wasn’t getting around too good and her arthritis made it painful for her to navigate the stairs.  Time has passed, she’s gotten worse.  My father is gone, but the stairs are still too much for her.  I watch her on the stairs on a good day… her judgment is off, she tries to go too fast, won’t hold on…  I know she values her independence, but she needs to learn to realize her limitations.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want her laid up in some bed for the rest of her days.  I know that being active is good for her, but I think she’s pushing herself too hard.  All she talks about is getting home so she can eat what she wants and start babysitting again.  I don’t think she knows that she won’t get to babysit on her own again… it’s just not safe.  I wish i could find something for her to do so that she wouldn’t feel like she didn’t have anything going on in her life.  I guess I need to add that to my never-ending “to do” list.

I should start off by saying that I HATE hospitals… Well I hate the inefficiency of them.  I’m grateful for the people that study and learn to heal/help people, but I hate the machine that hospitals have become and the fact that they all seem interested in passing patients along rather than helping them.

So my mom went to the emergency room at about midnight on sunday night/monday morning.  She had been sore/achey all day but at this point she was completely unable to move.  So she got to the emergency room, they gave her some drugs and she sat there…. my sister called me at 6a to tell me that they were moving her to another hospital, and she sat there… at 11am I went to the emergency room to see what was going on.  There was no bed available at the other hospital, but beds available at the current hospital.  So, why not stay at the current hospital?  Oh they don’t accept her insurance there…  so she sat there.  At 5pm they got authorization to put her in a room at that hospital because there was still nothing available at the other hospital.  17 hrs… Of course sitting in the emergency room, no one really checks on you.  Are you breathing? great, mission accomplished.

She never got to see a doctor yesterday because they were gone by the time she was situated.  Hopefully someone will see her today and we will be able to get a better idea of what is going on when she’ll be better.  For now, she’s on morphine… and generally happy.