Through My Caregiver Eyes - Hospitalization

Short note - she is hospitalized!

Mom's rash continued to grow and spread and generally make her miserable.  All efforts to treat seemed to fail.  Finally she was hospitalized last Tuesday with the intent that an Infectious Disease Physician take control of this condition and aggressive treatment started.

Carbuncles is the initial diagnosis.  IV antibiotics and a surgical lancing of one of the boils has been ordered.  She is on pain patches and morphine.  It has been a difficult time.

My days are now consumed with her care once again. I am with her from early morning until evening.  She is too weak to stand or even to adjust her position in bed.  She is too weak to feed herself.  Her pain medicine is a mercy but also a poison to her health.  Without the morphine she has bad pain, with the morphine she has some relief but sleeps the entire time which only continues to weakens her.  And even when she was healthy, she could not respond to questions of the doctors so I become her voice.

Although hospitalization is meant to focus and intensify the process of disease identification and treatment ... vigilance becomes the caregiver's main job.  Nurses are busy people.  They don't have time to meet every need.  They cannot note every change.  And they can't come when needed if the person can't remember to push the Nurse Button.  I become her hands.

And when ordered tests conflict with the current needs of the patient, you have to step in and say "no." Early in the admission mom's ability to void stopped.  A catheter was ordered - but not immediately done.  And then after a time transport arrived to take her for additional testing in the hospital - and I flipped.  The poor transport guy must have thought I was nuts when I said she wasn't going anywhere until her bladder was drained and I went to find the nurse.  I made her aware that everything - including testing would be halted until she put in mom's catheter.  She complied.  Mom's pain was reduced by half.

All these people mean well, but they only see their little part of the process.

Vigilance!

My time is now not my own.  Blogging will cease for now.

If you are a praying person, I ask for your prayers.  Hospitalization, while sometimes necessary, often negatively impacts the patient who is 88 and can start a downward slide that cannot be controlled.